This slightly technical review has brought us so far as this: there was a certain proneness among earlier observers to over-estimate the age of the yew, and it is only as a result of modern observation that the tendency has been checked. Whoever has walked along the Pilgrims’ Way of the Southern counties, and has stopped to pass his tape-measure around the oldest yews, must have realized that popular notions concerning the age of these trees are not justified. Elsewhere, I have attempted to show that many of these yews are successors of earlier ones, and that they were designedly preserved by pilgrims and other wayfarers[968]. That explanation embraces the spirit of the folk-tales which point to existing yew-trees as ante-dating particular Norman or Saxon churches. The traditions cover the fact that trees have studded the Pilgrims’ Way for many centuries—a conclusion differing from the reckless guesses of guide-book antiquaries respecting the vast age of individual existing yews.
In some few instances, as we shall see, churchyard yews are extremely ancient, and it is a sound hypothesis that a replacement of dead yews has often been made, thus bridging over the period which has elapsed from the introduction of Christianity and the rearing of churches to the present day. But, in general, deductions drawn from the age of existing buildings are faulty. A caution must also be entered against over-estimating the age of particular trees in yew groves which are known to be ancient. Popular tradition says that the yews in Kingly Bottom, or Vale, near Chichester, existed when the sea-kings landed. The legend may be doubted, yet if we were to express it as Dr Lowe suggests—“yews were there” at that date—the statement would probably be accurate. Presented in this form, we may fairly assume the statement true for earlier periods. Doubtless the Neolithic flint-workers of the Vale, of whose old mines large numbers were discovered in 1910, looked upon a dusky yew grove as they went to their labours. Once more: in spite of the oft-repeated assertion that this or that yew is alluded to in Domesday Book, it is none the less a fact that no individual yew, no individual tree, in short, is mentioned therein[969].
From a long descriptive list of aged yew trees, slowly accumulated in a note-book, a few examples only need be extracted. At the head, in regard to antiquity, stands probably the yew in the graveyard of Fortingal (Fortingale, or erroneously, Fotheringhall), Perthshire. Sir R. Christison estimated this tree to be 3000 years old, and deemed it “the most venerable specimen of living European vegetation[970].” De Candolle’s determination was about the same as Christison’s. The hollow stump, which has been carefully railed in, is now the merest wreckage. The Fortingal yew was measured by Daines Barrington in 1769, when the circumference was set down as 52 feet[971]. Pennant, a few years later, gave the result as 56½ feet, so that, reckoning on the 75-year basis, the tree would at that date be about 1340 years old. Mr C. T. Ramage, basing his calculations on the observed rate of growth of a yew in Montgomeryshire, arrived at the total of 1400 years[972]. It is worthy of notice that a very old ecclesiastical establishment once existed near the Fortingal yew[973]. Loudon gives us a woodcut representing the tree as it appeared in 1837[974]; beyond this we have to rely on the figures quoted, and on oral tradition.
Competing with the Fortingal yew for the premier position, there formerly existed that of Brabourne, in Kent. It was alluded to by Evelyn in his Discourse on Forest Trees (1664), as already “supperannuated,” and it disappeared about a century ago[975]. De Candolle put its age at more than 3000 years[976], and while this was doubtless an over-estimate, yet, if the recorded circumference, 59 feet[977], be correctly stated, the tree was actually more ancient than its Scottish rival.
A third claimant, from Hensor (Bucks), must be introduced with a wavering pen. Its circumference, according to Mr J. R. Jackson, of Kew, was 81 feet[978], hence, if this measurement be accurate, the yews already mentioned are hopelessly out-ranged, for here we should have a tree 2000 years old. Unfortunately, this yew no longer remains to tell its own story, or to allow the measurement to be checked.
The celebrated churchyard yew of Darley Dale, Derbyshire, has suffered much in reputation owing to travellers’ tales. Half a century since its diameter was approximately 9½ feet[979], its age may therefore be roughly estimated as 760-770 years.
A dead yew, under-propped, and chained together so as to preserve the upright position, stands in the grounds of Kersal Cell, Lancashire. This cell was founded about the middle of the twelfth century, and Mr Arthur Mayall has suggested that the seed from which the yew sprang was brought from the Holy Land at the close of the Second Crusade (1149)[980].
The yews known as the “Seven Sisters,” which grew on a knoll near the mill at Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire, but of which only two remain, have been deemed by an able, though anonymous, authority to be “most certain relics” of the mid-twelfth century[981]. The Abbey was founded in A.D. 1135. For the sake of comparison, De Candolle’s figures—1280 years[982]—although too high, may be noted.
The Buckland yew, near Dover, which was removed from the churchyard in 1880, was one of those erroneously reputed to have been mentioned in Domesday Book. Serious historians, however, like Hasted, do not make this mistake. The tree was of vast size, though details are now lacking. At Watcombe, a lonely farm on the roadside between Wantage and Hungerford, stands a cluster of aged yews, possibly coeval with the Benedictine cell and church which were built there at the close of the eleventh century. The trees form a kind of covered way or cloister and now surround a central pond[983]. Of “Talbot’s yew,” in Tankersley Park, Yorkshire, it is said that a man on horseback could turn round inside its hollow trunk[984], and similar stories are related of other yew trees.
Our catalogue might be extended, but there is scant space to describe the yew of South Hayling (Hants), 33 feet round at its narrowest girth[985]; that of Tisbury (Wilts.), 37 feet[986]; of Crowhurst (Surrey) ([Fig. 72]), nearly 32¾ feet at a yard from the ground[987]; or of its namesake, the Sussex Crowhurst, 27 feet[988]. The Chipstead yew, in Surrey ([Fig. 73]), and the two yews of Mells, in Somerset, one of which is shown in [Fig. 74], are also well-grown trees. Hambledon, in Surrey, possesses two good examples; the larger is seen in [Fig. 75]. A mere glimpse only can be taken of the Swallowfield yew, Berkshire, believed by Kingsley to be older than the parish church (built A.D. 1286)[989]; of Evelyn’s specimen at Scottshall (Kent), which he said was eighteen of his paces “in compasse[990]”; the huge monarch of Twyford churchyard, Hampshire; and the memorable, oft-described yew of Gilbert White’s village of Selborne[991].