Harefield already had a priest when the Domesday survey was made in 1086, which is why the Ancient Yew Group takes it that there was a church at Harefield back then. The yew in St Mary's churchyard is the one tree here the group counts as ancient. Its size is harder to pin down. The group's earlier record put it in the class of yews more than seven metres round. Its 2022 list for the Diocese of London puts it at five to seven metres instead. Under the group's own rule of thumb, a yew that size is likely more than 500 years old. Nobody has published a measured girth, so the band is wide and the age is an estimate from size, not a count of rings. No legend comes attached to it in anything we have read. What it has is a churchyard south of the village with a church presumed there since Domesday, and by the best reckoning available more than five centuries of growth. The most recent dated photographs we have found are from January 2014. If you visit, tell us how it is doing, and if you have a tape, tell us what it measures. The churchyard is free and open to the public.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
St Mary's churchyard, Church Hill, Harefield UB9
You can recognise it as the one ancient yew of St Mary's churchyard, older than the younger yews around it. It stands in the churchyard south of Harefield village.
Harefield has no station; the nearest rail is Uxbridge (Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines), then a local bus (route not source-checked).
In fruit
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
