Speke Hall

Nearest town: Liverpool

Site type: garden

Access: Public

Church name:

Diocese:

County: Merseyside

Country: England

Grid ref: SJ41918256

Lost yew site: No

Date visited: 2-Oct-06

Recorded by: Alexandra Muir

Protection & responsibility: No data

Yews recorded at this site: Notable

Notes: Speke Hall is a National Trust property. The site was noted in the Domesday book but the present building dates from the period 1490 to 1612. The yews, known as Adam and Eve grow in the courtyard. Earliest mention of the trees was in 1712 when Ezekiel Mason was paid for 'making Frames to set around ye yew trees in the Court'. Was this to protect newly planted trees, or some sort of seating arrangement? If the trees were planted at the same time why is one so much larger than the other? In 2024 Stuart Baker provided the following information: Regarding the yew trees in the courtyard at Speke Hall, near Liverpool: in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool there is a painting attributed to James Campbell, dated 1854, entitled "The Courtyard at Speke Hall" which clearly depicts two large and very well established yew trees in the positions we recognise as occupied by Adam and Eve. Campbell was born in 1828, so it seems almost incontrovertible that there were two trees when Harriet Beecher Stowe visited although she mentioned only one.