The Llangernyw Yew

A spirit is said to speak from this tree once a year. Every 31 October, Welsh folklore holds, a voice called the Angelystor, the Recording Angel, calls out from inside the trunk the names of parishioners who will die before the next Halloween. The tree behind the story is a yew in the churchyard of St Digain's, in the small Conwy valley village of Llangernyw, and whatever you make of the legend, its size is not in doubt: a trunk 10.9 metres round, split so long ago into several thick stems that a first glance reads it as a stand of trees rather than one. Its age is where the honesty has to sit. A 2002 certificate, still displayed at the churchyard gate, put it at 4,000 to 5,000 years and helped win it a place among the Tree Council's Fifty Great British Trees that year. The Woodland Trust is more careful: it calls that figure disputed and suggests the tree may instead be roughly as old as the church beside it, founded some 1,500 years ago. Yew wood rots from the inside as it ages, erasing the growth rings that would settle the question, so nobody has. Eight younger yews share the churchyard. This is the one people come for, and it costs nothing to see.