Llangernyw Yew
Some believe this mighty yew, spilling from a churchyard in North Wales, to be 1,500 years old, others 4,000. Whatever its age, it evokes both solemnity and serenity, says Julie Brominicks
Conwy,
Llangernyw is a small village. A few houses, a shop, a museum. A pub. A church. Trees, of course, grace the gardens. And nearby in the valley, avenues of monkey puzzles parade across the Hafodunos Estate, and burnished-gold hawthorn, hazel and birch soften the borders of rivers and fields.
But most venerable of them all is the yew in St Digain’s
churchyard. The yew is of such great age it has split into four huge trunks, giving the impression of multiple trees or an upturned hand. You can sit in its open palm. The canopy is dark. Its boughs almost bend to the ground.
In post-Roman Britain, yews were venerated by both Celtic Britons and pagan Anglo-Saxons and became associated with early Christian churches. Evergreen and regenerative, yews were used in burials, as foliage and instead of palms at Easter. Their dense canopies gave shelter from the rain. While these trees appear in churchyards across Britain, Wales has the highest density of ancient yews. The worship of sacred trees predates Christianity and it is a popular notion that the yews predate the churches.
PRE-CHRISTIAN ROOTS
St Digain was a 5th-century saint from Cornwall. The curvilinear churchyard enclosure and nearby holy well are both early Christian features. Two standing stones were inscribed sometime from the 7th to the 9th century. A pair of rough boulders also hint that this may have been a site of pre-Christian worship. The churchyard is dominated by the spreading yew, often described as being 4,000 years old and the oldest living thing in Europe.
But yews are difficult to date. The heartwood rots away making carbon testing and dendrochronology impossible, and typically chaotic growth makes even girth measurements problematic. In Trees of the Celtic Saints; The Ancient Yews of Wales, Andrew Morton writes of the Llangernyw Yew: “It is legitimate to claim the tree as one of the oldest and most impressive yews in Wales, with a history at least back to the inscribed stones. Whether it was growing before the earliest saint set up his oratory here in the 5th or 6th century, we cannot say.”
ANCIENT BEAUTY
Its bark is cool and smooth. Its nobbled wood, almost pink, resembles broken coral. A mulch of needles collects in its hollows. There is a feeling of solemnity here, and serenity, perhaps even solace. That this tree may be 1,500 rather than 4,000 years old does nothing to diminish its greatness.