Combe Florey's churchyard holds two female yews, and centuries separate them. The young one grows north-west of the church of St Peter and St Paul. The old one stands south of it, on the east side, and it is the reason to come. The Ancient Yew Group measured it at 813 centimetres, taken five centimetres off the ground, where a yew's trunk flares widest. That puts it in their top class of seven metres and over, which they treat as ancient. It is an estimate from size, not a dating, and nobody has put a year on it. The church beside it dates from about 1300 and is Grade I. On the size estimate the yew is older still, but that is the estimate talking. Female yews are the ones that bear the red, fleshy cups around their seeds in autumn; males only shed pollen. Here you can see the same kind of tree at two ends of its life, a short walk apart, and judge for yourself how many centuries the difference represents. Nobody has written that number down, and if you know it, tell us.
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Getting there
St Peter and St Paul Church, Combe Florey, Somerset
You can recognise it as the larger of the two yews, over eight metres round near the ground. It stands south of the church on the east side; the young yew grows north-west.
Village NW of Taunton; Taunton to Williton bus along the A358 passes (check). No railway.
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.