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Hope Bagot churchyard

Tree ID: 514

Yews recorded: Ancient 7m+

Tree girth: 737cm

Girth height: at 30cm

Tree sex: female

Date of visit: 1-Oct-97

Source of earliest mention: 1939: The King's England - Arthur Mee

Notes:

October 1997 – Tim Hills: Branches reach the ground around the tree and an entrance has been cut to enable access to the enclosed area around the vast bole. Many of these branches have become embedded and grow as small new trees. There are only a handful of churchyards where this has been allowed to happen and the churchyard management team are aware of this exceptional feature of yew regeneration.
2004 – Tim Hills: I recorded a girth of 24′ 2” (737cm) at 1′.
May 2006 – Delegates at the Cherishing Churchyards conference visited this site to see an example of one of Britain’s finest yews. The Caring for God’s Acre project have supplied the following information from a report carried out at Hope Bagot churchyard in October 1999 by Peter Norman Dip.Arb(RFS).
‘It should be regarded as an irreplaceable component of the national population of ancient trees and managed as such. It is clearly valued by local people and shows signs of having been ‘dressed’ in the past’.
2023: The yew has suffered a major branch collapse. It will recover.

Hope Bagot churchyard

Yew trees at Hope Bagot churchyard: