Boisney

September 2014 – Tim Hills: Looking up into this solid looking tree reveals that it has a number of large hollow spaces, as well as new branches growing around old branch material. Chains hold the tree together. Girth of 23′ 6” (716cm) between the ground and a height of 18” was an attempt to obtain the minimum girth. It would be difficult to repeat.
Wim Peeters: In the ‘Dictionnaire topographique, statistique et historique du departement de l’Eure’ published in 1840, this yew was described as having a diameter of ‘seize pieds’ or 16 feet. In the 1849 “Annuaire des cinq departements de l’ancienne Normandie” the writer corrects this, saying that it was undoubtedly speaking about the circumference and not the diameter. The feet used in the measurement probably refers to ‘le pied du roi’, the King’s foot, which measured about 32.5cm. In the 1862 ‘Memoires et notes de M Auguste Le Prevost’ the yew is given a measurement of 5m 33cm.