Holly, Yew and Box 



by Gregory the Great to preach Christianity in 

 Britain, he was particularly enjoined not to 

 destroy the heathen temples, but only to remove 

 the images, to wash the walls with holy water, 

 to erect altars, etc., and so convert them into 

 Christian Churches." Some old Yews are sur- 

 rounded with a circle of stones, and Loudon, 

 in drawing attention to this, says, that " Dr 

 Stukeley believes that round churches are the 

 most ancient in England, and that, as a circle 

 was a sacred symbol among the eastern nations 

 of antiquity, it would be interesting to know 

 whether the raised platform within a circle of 

 stones, which is sometimes found round our old 

 Yews, as in Darley Dale and Llanfoist church- 

 yards, be not a remnant of this superstition." 

 Many of the first Christian churches are stated 

 to have been built and intertwined with green 

 boughs on the sites of druidical graves. When 

 Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire was founded for 

 the Cistercian Monks, by Archbishop Thurstan 

 of York, in 1132, the first Monks who went to 

 take possession of the land found no house, and 

 until the Abbey was erected they are stated to 

 have lived and worshipped beneath the shelter 

 of large Yew trees, those trees being the famous 

 Fountains Abbey Yews of the present day. 



The fact of the Yew being found so often in 

 churchyards has given rise to many curious 

 superstitions, whilst its sombre and melancholy 



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