Compton Dundon Yew

Edmund Rack measured this yew in the 1780s, and in the 230 years since, on paper, it has barely changed. Rack, who surveyed the churchyard before his death in 1787, called it a very old yew with a fine top, and noted that the body was hollow and 23 feet round. Tim Hills found 24 feet 9 at ground level in 2000. Peter Norton measured 23 feet 9 in 2014. Different heights, different tapes, and still the same tree within a foot or two. That stillness is why nobody can tell you its age from its waist. The Ancient Yew Group's figure is 742 centimetres at 30 centimetres off the ground, and yews of this size fall in its class of probably over 800 years, an estimate from girth and not a dating. Locally it was credited with about 1,000 years, the rector Rev. R. Kelland recorded in 1954. Wikipedia goes further, over 1,700, with nothing behind the number. We give you all three and the honest answer, which is that it is very old and undated. It is a male tree, still hollow, standing inside a low wall to the south-south-east of St Andrew's. Rack would recognise it.