Goostrey Yew

When Goostrey rebuilt its church in the 18th century, it kept the yew. A wooden church of about 1220 gave way to the St Luke's of 1792, and the old tree by the entrance stayed where it was, as a short history of the church and its yew recorded in 1992. It was famous already. In 1825 Hulbert's Museum Europaeum described a remarkably large yew, calculated to have stood at least a thousand years, and a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine in the 1830s gave it twelve yards round and the same thousand years. Twelve yards is 36 feet. When Tim Hills of the Ancient Yew Group measured it in 1999, he found about 25 feet close to the ground, 7.62 metres, just above the spreading roots. What he described was a male tree whose heart has become a platform of heartwood about three feet high and four and a half across, held together by crumbling sapwood. The Group classes it as exceptional. The parish council speaks of the village's 1,200-year-old yew, and the church says it is believed to be around 1,200 years old, with a framed certificate inside the door recording the figure. Neither says what the number rests on, so it is the parish's figure, not a measurement. That 1999 visit is our latest firm record of the tree, so a dated photograph from you would help. It stands just beside the south entrance of St Luke's.