REMARKABLE YEWS. 133 



Yews were already standing.* The true cause of the association, in this 

 country at least, is not, we think, difficult to be found- this is in the 

 character and habit of the tree itself. There is no other native evergreen 

 tree at all to be compared with the Yew as regards its foliage, its 

 massive sombre aspect, and its longevity, and hence the Yew would be 

 naturally selected to represent the feelings, the sentiments and the hopes 

 associated with burial-grounds and in connection with places of worship 

 where sentiments and feelings are most likely to seek expression by 

 visible representatives or enduring monuments. The feeling of Hope 

 lives in its evergreen foliage ; Sorrow is remembered in its dark and 

 sombre shade, and Veneration is awakened in its aged aspect. It may 

 be safely assumed from the known antiquity of many Yews still standing 

 in churchyards and the like places, that the association of the Yew with 

 religion must be of very ancient origin ; and the probability is very great 

 that it took its rise at an epoch anterior to the introduction of 

 Christianity into Britain. 



Among the ancient Yews still existing that are, or have been associated 

 with sacred edifices, the following are celebrated : 



In the churchyard of Buckland near Dover is a Yew of great antiquity, 

 the trunk of which was split by lightning about the middle of the 

 eighteenth century during a storm which destroyed the steeple of the 

 church. It has a special interest apart from its antiquity from the fact 

 that in 1880 it was removed to another part of the churchyard sixty 

 yards distant, and the horizontal position assumed by the trunk after the 

 injury was restored to a comparatively erect one. 



In the churchyard of Church Preen in Shropshire stands one of the 

 finest Yews in Great Britain; it is 50 feet high and has a girth -of 21| 

 feet at four feet from the ground ; the trunk is hollow and will hold 

 twenty-one men standing upright. The tree is, to all appearances, still 

 healthy.! 



The Crowlmrst (Surrey) Yew ranks among the largest in the country. 

 The trunk has a girth of 32 feet near the ground and is hollow 

 inside; the cavity has been fitted up with a table and benches around, on 

 which sixteen persons may sit. The top was blown off in 1845. 



In the churchyard of Darley in Derbyshire is a venerable tree 

 31 feet in girth. The trunk which is hollow is only regular and 

 straight to about ten feet from the ground where it divides into several 

 large limbs, two of which are erect and the others spreading. It is a 

 fruit-bearing tree and believed to be over one thousand years old. 



The Fountains Abbey Yews near Boroughbridge in Yorkshire are, 

 after the Fortingal Yew, supposed to be the oldest in Great Britain. 

 There were originally seven, and in Evelyn's time six were still standing, 

 but in 1891 Dr. Lowe found but five, and of these two were dead and 

 uprooted. 



In Gresford churchyard near Wrexham in Denbighshire is one of the 

 oldest and still one of the largest Yews. The circumference of the trunk 

 at five feet from the ground is over 30 feet and its height exceeds 

 50 feet. 



* "There was a very ancient Yew in the churchyard of Kirkheating, near Hnddersfield. 

 The inhabitants of the village have a tradition that the church (which dates before 1245) 

 was built to the tree, and not the tree planted to the church. It was living in 1864, but 

 is now dead." G. Roberts, in "Science Gossip," 1875, p. 70. 



t The Yew Trees of Great Britain, p. 197. 



