The Borrowdale Yews (the Fraternal Four)

William Wordsworth called them "those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, joined in one solemn and capacious grove," and for two centuries visitors have climbed the Cumbrian hillside above Seathwaite looking for exactly that number. They will find three. The fourth yew died at some point nobody recorded, its sex and its story lost with it. The largest survivor, dated by dendrochronology to roughly 1,500 years old, measures about 7.5 metres round, more than the other two combined. It took a direct storm hit in 1998 and another in January 2005, which hollowed its crown, and it is now regrowing from the sections that survived; visitors have reportedly lit fires inside that hollow trunk since, adding fresh damage to old. Despite Wordsworth's masculine plural, at least three of the four, living and dead, are known or believed to be female. The National Trust, which owns the site, has fenced the grove against grazing sheep and otherwise left it alone, the same restraint it shows most of its ancient trees. Free to visit. From Seathwaite, cross the bridge over the River Derwent and follow the footpath roughly half a mile up the hillside; the ground is rough, not paved, and there is no public transport to the trailhead itself.