The Lorton Yew (Pride of Lorton Vale)

In 1653 George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, came to Lorton and noted a yew so full of people that he feared they would break it down. Wordsworth called the same tree the pride of Lorton Vale in his poem Yew-Trees, and walked Coleridge out to see it in 1799. It is still here, behind the old malt house that is now the village hall, on the bank of Hope Beck. It is much smaller than the tree those men saw. A county history of 1816 gave the trunk as 27 feet round, about 8.2 metres. In the 19th century a storm broke it in half, and the wood of the fallen part was made into the Mayor's Chair in Cockermouth. When the Ancient Yew Group measured what remains in 2002, it was 4.95 metres round, a hollow, broken female tree slowly losing branches. Its age is disputed. Local sources say at least a thousand years, and the parish's own village history, from the old girth, suggests about 1,200. The yew group's rule of thumb would put a trunk of today's size nearer 500 or 600. Estimates differ, and the storm makes the old measurement hard to use. The tree stands on private ground. See it from the Pound, the small public green by Whit Beck at the bridge in High Lorton, where it has its own interpretation board. A daughter tree, planted in 2004, grows at Crossgates, on the road between Low and High Lorton.