Windlesham

In Swanton’s 1958 The Yew Trees of England the following is recorded: Hone, in his Year Book, 1829, gave an engraving of an ancient yew in Windlesham Churchyard, said to have been planted in the time of William the Conqueror, and described as being 12ft in girth and 21ft high. A locked case exhibited in the church today has the following note on a brass plate beneath it. “This case, containing the Chain Apology of Jewel, published in the 16th century, is made from the yew mentioned in Hone’s Year Book, as standing in Windlesham Churchyard in the 11th century and blown down in 1896; and from part of the old beam charred when the church was struck by lightning and burnt down in 1676. T.Dale, windlesham, fecit 1906.” Lowe in The Yew Trees of Britain and Ireland writes that the yew was blown down in December, 1894, and “had been long dead.” He considrered that its age had been greatly exaggerated and that it was probably less than 400 years old. www.southernlife.org.uk/Surrey/windlesham.htm reports that ‘there was at one time a warning notice in Windlesham Church against mutilation of the churchyard yew. An offender would be liable to one of three punishments: whipping at the cart tail, standing at the pillory, or a fine. The tree was blown down in a storm!’ In 1946 it was reported to Vaughan Cornish, for his book The Churchyard Yew and Immortality, that here were ‘several yews, but not of remarkable character’.