The Coln Rogers churchyard yew
The church beside this yew still has walls the Saxons built. St Andrew's at Coln Rogers is a small Grade I church in the Coln valley, and parts of it are Saxon, from the 11th century by Wikipedia's dating. The yew grows to its south-west, in the small churchyard. What is striking about the tree is how little its numbers move. Tim Hills put it at between 18 feet 6 and 19 feet 10 inches when he visited in September 1999. Peter Norton came back in 2013 and found 18 feet 10. The Ancient Yew Group's current figure is 574 centimetres at 30 centimetres off the ground. Fourteen years and two recorders, and the tree is essentially the size it was. Measuring an old yew tells you how big it is far better than how old. That is why the age here is a band, not a date. The Group's girth classes place a yew between five and seven metres in the ancient category, likely over 500 years. Nobody has dated this one, and its exact age is a question we would like answered. What you get on the day is the pairing, a quiet valley church with Saxon stonework and, beside it, a yew the Group counts as ancient.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
St Andrew's Church, Coln Rogers, Gloucestershire GL54 3JZ
You can recognise it as the large yew south-west of St Andrew's, the small Grade I church with Saxon walls. It stands in the churchyard on that side of the building.
Open churchyard (Ancient Yew Group lists access as public; church parochial church council ground). Free, no opening hours.
Coln Rogers, a village in the Coln valley north-east of Cirencester; no railway; car or taxi.
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.