Victorian restorers may have cut this yew down to a stump, and it answered with fifteen trunks. A photograph from 1867, the time of the church's restoration, shows something that looks like a stump where the tree stands, and the Ancient Yew Group asks the obvious question without being able to settle it. What grew back is certainly not a single trunk. In 1998 the Group counted about 15 stems rising from a raised mound east of the church, each between 0.9 and 1.8 metres round, by Wondermondo's figures. Measured around the whole mass at ground level, it comes to 10.34 metres. That reads as a giant, but it is a girth of many stems together, so it overstates any one of them. The Group puts yews of this size in its top class, ancient at seven metres and over, and that is an estimate from size, not a date. It is a male tree, and it has had a hard time lately. Its health was recorded as below average in 2015, and it was photographed again in 2024. The church of St John the Baptist dates from about 1180, and the mound the yew grows on stands about 1.2 metres high. If the stump story is true, this is what a yew does when you take it to the ground. It comes back, many times over.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
St John the Baptist Church, Broadwindsor, Dorset
You can recognise it by the cluster of about 15 stems rising together from a raised mound. It stands east of the church of St John the Baptist.
Village between Beaminster and Crewkerne, Dorset; infrequent bus (check). Drive.
In fruit
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.