Tree that’s rooted in mystery, magic and murder
The wych elm has a dark past... and after surviving for hundreds of years, may not have such a bright future
‘Our forebears used elm to build boats and barges’
‘Judas is said to have hanged himself on one’
It was at least 800 years old and, indeed, the oldest wych-elm tree in all Europe. It was once beheld by Mary, Queen of Scots and, only last October, a festival was held in its honour.
In appearance it was at once majestic and hideous: a vast, gnarled stump by the gate, thick raggy branches waving at the heavens in despair. But the Beauly Priory elm was much loved locally, and there was much distress when, on January 5, without warning, it toppled from its roots.
Death had claimed it slowly. It had long been tormented by Dutch elm disease, it last budded in 2021, and as of last autumn, less than 5 per cent of it was living material. But it was ‘beautiful and spooky’ and as a venerable landmark will be sorely missed.
Ulmus glabra, the wych or Scots elm, has the widest range of all European elm species, growing from Ireland to the Urals and from the Arctic Circle to Sicily.
It is certainly the only species of elm actually native to Britain and was once most abundant in Scotland; indeed, the Gaelic word for elms – leaman – is probably the root of Lomond, from the celebrated loch to the table-top hills in Fife.
‘Wych’ is from an Old English word meaning supple or pliant – it has nothing to do with cauldrons and broomsticks – and the timber is indeed very easy to bend. It is therefore of little use in construction and, surprisingly, does not even burn very well.
But, like the alder, the elm is very tolerant of damp – even boggy – conditions, and the timber in turn is very resistant to moisture. Our forebears, accordingly, often used elm to build boats, barges, bridges and piers and cartwheels.
The wood was prized, too, for coffins. Welsh archers, of medieval yore, favoured elm for their longbows (the English preferred to use yew) and in the Highlands it was often used to make camans for shinty – though ash is the wood preferred today.
The wych elm was also prized as an ornamental tree, as it grows to huge and stately size. One indeed features in perhaps John Constable’s most celebrated painting, the Hay Wain. In the 19th century it was widely planted in Edinburgh, as the city swiftly expanded, as a park and avenue tree, and fine specimens can still be seen in the Meadows, Leith Links and elsewhere.
EM Forster recalled for the rest of his life a splendid wych elm that grew by his childhood home in Hertfordshire, and it features heavily in his 1910 novel Howard’s End. It overhangs the eponymous house and is said to have a ‘girth that a dozen men could not have spanned... a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots.’
Margaret Schlegel, the tale’s protagonist, takes great security in the tree, fearing that ‘any westerly gale might blow the wych elm down and bring the end of all things.’ But, when Howard’s End was filmed in a 1991 Merchant-Ivory production, a horse-chestnut featured instead.
That reflects the unfolding and bleak tragedy that forces us so often to write of elms, their timber and its uses in the past tense.
Dutch elm disease first reached Europe in 1910, but from 1967 a particularly virulent strain from Japan has laid waste elm populations on the Continent, in these islands and in the Americas too.
It is spread by three species of bark-beetle, starves the tree by killing its leaves – and the devastation is hard to overstate.
In the past 50 years, France has lost 97 per cent of its elm trees. Paris was once celebrated for her elms, some 30,000 adorning the ‘City of Lights’ in the Sixties. Only a thousand now remain.
It is reckoned that more than 25million elms have succumbed in the United Kingdom and sadly few of the huge specimen trees we once boasted now survive. the largest concentration today is around Brighton and Hove, largely because of that district’s isolation between the Channel and the South Downs and because of the vigilance of the local authorities, who swoop on any elm at the least sign of infection.
Even so, only half of the 30,000 stately elms boasted locally in 1983 are still alive. Sanitary felling has also preserved most of the elm population on the Isle of Man.
Edinburgh has done its best, and still enjoys the largest concentration of mature elms in Scotland – though the population has more than halved since 1976. the city continues to lose about a thousand a year and the sudden collapse of one, by Melville Drive on the Meadows, killed a carload of people in a freak 1982 accident.
There is much dark mythology surrounding the elm tree. Judas is said to have hanged himself on one, and in Celtic times they were much associated with the Underworld and the ‘little people.’
Its association with coffins did not help and there was another reason why the tree was feared – its habit of shedding heavy branches, without warning, on otherwise still, warm days.
There was accordingly an old saying, ‘Elm hateth man, and waiteth’. But the wych elm had other uses in Scotland. twine made from its inner bark was deployed in an early form of tiedyeing. the tree was itself the source of a yellow dye, and when fodder was scarce, gathered leaves could be fed to livestock.
It had also its part in folk medicine. the bark of Forster’s boyhood tree, well chewed, was reputed to cure toothache. Boiled, it was used to treat burns, and the leftover liquor as a dose for colds and sore throats.
One even features in a Worcester murder-mystery from the Second World War. In 1943, four young teenage boys, up to no good in the branches of a hollowed-out wych elm in Hagley Wood, were shaken to find the skeleton of a young woman inside it, still with some hair and rags.
The police pathologist established she had been there for about 18 months, that she must have been dumped in the tree very soon after death, and that fabric in her mouth suggested foul play.
Then graffiti started to appear – WHO PUT BELLA DOWN THE WYCH ELM – HAGLEY WOOD – indeed, folk still chalk up variants of the phrase locally even today and rumours swirled of one Bella, a prostitute, who had disappeared several years earlier.
But the body was never identified and, while the police file remains open, the dark affair has never been solved.
The Beauly Priory elm survives virtually, for the tree was laser-scanned by Historic Environment Scotland two years ago and the eerie 3D model can readily be viewed on line. And plans are already in hand for its surviving, usable timber. Branches cut last year were donated to the local Men’s Shed and other sections of the fallen hulk will be reimagined into artwork.
Better still, saplings sown by the tough old thing survive nearby. ‘It’s such a shame what’s happened,’ says Rosie MacDonald, 80, of Beauly Community Council.
‘The tree has been a feature of the village for so long… It would be nice if they put something there to remember it in future.’