Country diary: this ancient yew should live forever
Evening sunlight reaches through the dark branches of the yew tree, animating sinuous shapes moving through its hulk like conjugal creatures. A bell chimes the quarter hour, but time means nothing here. A sign at the foot of the trunk reads: “This Yew Tree is believed to have been planted [in] approx 457 AD and thought to be the oldest tree in Europe.”
The Church Preen yew is one of Shropshire’s most celebrated trees but, although at least 1,500 years old, it is probably not the oldest yew. It stands in the graveyard above a church that was once part of Wenlock’s 12th-century abbey; it has been suggested that the tree was a sacred legacy of local preChristian culture Christianised by the siting of a chapel beneath it in Saxon times.
The sign should read: “This ancient yew tree is immortal.” Its massive trunk – 23ft in circumference in 1998 and girded with an iron band – is hollow, the outer stems fused into supporting pillars; roots forming from branches above grow down the inside to feed on its own decay. Unless some catastrophe happens, the tree will keep rejuvenating itself forever.
But there is, as the campaigner Janis Fry has pointed out, little to save such trees from human stupidity. Her petition for legal protection for these “living monuments” has collected more than 200,000 signatures, and this month I went to the House of Lords for a meeting to build a consensus between public opinion, conservation groups, tree experts and a cross-party alliance of peers and MPs, and to work with a barrister on drafting new legislation. Contributors talked about ancient yews killed by overzealous pruning or even cut down because they grew over gravestones.
These venerable trees are living places: places of worship, inspiration, pilgrimage, history, dreams – but, essentially, places of ecological community. The fungi that let roots take in water and nutrients; the fungi that hollow out dead wood so internal roots can feed the tree by recycling its own decay; all the myriad microbes, plants and animals that live in and around the tree – they are all part of a community of immortal life. We should protect them if it’s the last thing we do.