Just for yew!
When most people think of old English churchyards, they imagine slightly unkempt, uneven rows of gravestones, with the slabs leaning to varying degrees and gnarled yew trees skulking in the corners. Whilst the presence of yews nowadays may have sinister overtones, in the past they were regarded in a more benevolent light.
The Druids regarded yews as being sacred trees, which represented longevity and regeneration. The reason for this is that when a yew bough droops to the ground and touches the earth, it forms new roots and eventually a new trunk. In due course, the original trunk becomes hollow and the tree takes on the appearance of a thicket. As the dating of trees by counting the growth rings depends on a sample of wood from the bark to the heartwood, the hollowness of old yews makes them difficult if not impossible to date. They can however, live for over a thousand years.
For the Celts, poisoning by taking an extract of yew was regarded as an honourable way of committing suicide, rather than submitting to a conqueror.
The Pictish word for yew is “ioua” and this is probably the original of the name Iona. Although this island is now regarded as a place of Christian worship and pilgrimage, its origins are older and it was once a powerful Druidic centre.
The connection between yews and the idea of resurrection was carried on after Christianity arrived. The Norman Conquest saw a surge in church building and with it, the planting of yews. Traditionally a tree would have been planted next to the path leading from the funeral gateway of the church to the main door and another beside the path leading to the lesser doorway. In early times, the priest and clerks would assemble under this tree to await the arrival of the pall bearers and the corpse. At one time, yew shoots were also buried with the dead.
Boughs of yews have been used as substitutes for palms at Easter and also used in decorations at Christmas because of their link with regeneration and therefore the coming of the New Year.
This planting of yew trees in church yards also served a more prosaic purpose, as the toxicity of the yew leaves meant that herdsmen ensured that their animals were kept well away from the area to prevent them being poisoned. Coincidentally, this also ensured the preservation of the yew trees, as they were spared being used for making long bows. Yew wood is ideal for this, as the heartwood withstands compression and returns to its original shape easily and the sapwood withstands tension and therefore prevents breakage of the heartwood. Longbows were therefore made from a section of the heartwood and sapwood to take advantage of these properties. So many yews were felled during the Middle Ages for bow making that a tax was imposed in 1472, whereby any ship entering an English port had to provide four bow staves per tun of cargo carried.
The idea of yews being the icon of everlasting life had been forgotten by the 17th century, which is fortunate for us (and the yew trees), for otherwise they probably would not have survived Puritan times. Indeed the majority of old yew trees are now found around churches. An exception to this is Kingley Vale Nature Reserve near Chichester, which is home to one of the few major stands of yews in England, many of which are at least a thousand years old.
By a strange quirk of science, yew trees now provide two chemotherapy drugs. The leaves of the European yew are used to make doctaxel and the bark of the Pacific yew is used to produce paclitaxel. Synthetic versions of both drugs are now available, although the leaves are still collected and used during the process of making the drugs. One of the two companies that collect clippings for this purpose is based in Chichester, West Sussex.
St. Mary Magdalene Church, Lyminster
The reason why I began considering the history of yew trees in churchyards is that I work part-time as a secretary to the vicar at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Lyminster. The churchyard there has two rather scruffy yews planted on either side of the main path, which have obviously been subjected to very hard pruning. However, there is a larger, more majestic specimen on the north side of the graveyard, near to the opening in the wall that allows the footpath to cross the church’s land. I wonder how long it has been there?
