Farndon Yew

About eight feet up its trunk, the Farndon yew has swallowed a rock some seven inches across. The Ancient Yew Group records it without saying how the stone got there. Local legend gives the tree a part in the Civil War. Brereton's Parliamentarian troops are said to have leaned their pikes and swords against it before going into St Chad's, which served as a barracks in the war. Britain Express and the Ancient Yew Group both repeat the story. Neither cites a record from the time, so take it as the village's telling. The church was rebuilt in 1658, all but the tower. It is a female tree near the porch on the north side. Much of its heartwood is dead and it is hollow in places, and a fluted inner stem shows where the sapwood shell of the original trunk has gone. Two recorders from the Group measured it at 20 feet 5 inches, 6.22 metres, three feet up in 2010, noted that it was undoubtedly larger once, and found a large, healthy crown. No source gives it an age. The Group's size class puts it above 500 years, and we go no further. The site may have been in use since Anglo-Saxon times, and the outline of the present church is 14th-century. Farndon sits on the River Dee on the Welsh border, about 12 km south of Chester. Our latest record is from 2010, so a photograph would help.