The Great Yew of Ormiston

This yew grew a ring of its own trunks. Its lower branches bent to the ground, rooted where they touched and sent up new stems around a hollow centre, which is why East Lothian calls it the Cathedral Yew. The Ancient Yew Group notes that yews layering like this are few in Scotland. Nobody will date it tighter than a millennium. Scotland's Yew Tree Heritage Initiative classes it as ancient exceptional, over a thousand years; the Ancient Yew Group goes as far as saying it could well be around a thousand years old, and this page will not sharpen that. The girth is unsettled too: 503cm measured at 30cm from the ground in a 2013 survey, against 592cm at chest height quoted in some secondary summaries, which is what happens when you put a tape around a tree carrying several major stems. Its written life starts in 1474, when a document was reportedly signed beneath the largest yew here. In 1545 George Wishart was seized nearby during the Scottish Reformation, and tradition puts John Knox under this tree, though that is oral tradition rather than record. It stands in the old grounds of Ormiston Hall, part housing estate now, up a marked path past the ruins. An Ancient Yew Group visit in 2001 found a private estate and no obvious way in; Scotland's Yew Tree Heritage Initiative now records the site as public, no fees and no set hours. Someone recently carved their initials into the trunk.