Astbury Yew

In 1915 a history of Astbury noted that its yew was so hollow that several people could shelter inside it at once. A century later the trunk is open enough to see straight through, and the tree leans on timber props beside the churchyard path. It has been dated more often than it has been measured. Newbold's history computed it at least 1,000 years old. Morton put it in Saxon times. An excursion party in 1888 settled for an ancient yew of some centuries' growth. St Mary's own church page goes furthest, saying tree-ring dating suggests two thousand years. A hollow yew has lost the rings at its heart, so we give that as the parish's figure. Tim Hills of the Ancient Yew Group visited in 1999, wrote that its vast old age cannot be doubted, and left it there. Nobody has recorded a girth either. The Group classes it as more than seven metres and unmeasurable, which is what a trunk that is mostly gap does to a tape. In 1999 it had only one branch above about 20 feet, and one prop. By 2016 there were two. Photographs from 2007 and 2016 show plenty of green, and those are the most recent records we have, so if you visit, tell us how it looks. It stands on the north side of St Mary's church, in a village a couple of kilometres south of Congleton.