Boningale Churchyard Yew

From the road, the Boningale yew looks solid. Walk round to its north side and it is hollow, the trunk opening into a horseshoe, with the wood thickening heavily along its eastern edge. It is a male tree, 396 centimetres round at the ground, about 13 feet, when the Ancient Yew Group visited in 2012. That is modest beside the big churchyard yews of Tettenhall and Codsall, and it stands alone here, the only yew in the churchyard. Its strongest evidence of age is a picture. A watercolour painted by the Reverend Williams in 1791, now held by Shropshire Archives, shows a yew at the church. The Ancient Yew Group reads it as this tree, which would make it more than 230 years old. Nobody has confirmed that the yew in the painting and the yew on the ground are the same, and nobody has put an estimate on its age, so the painting is a floor rather than a date. If you know more, tell us. St Chad's is a Norman church, built in the 12th century, and the yew grows to its south-east. Our most recent first-hand description of the tree comes from that 2012 visit. We believe it still stands, and if you go, we would like to hear how it looks. The churchyard is open and free, in a Shropshire village about 10 kilometres west of Wolverhampton. Albrighton, on the railway towards Shrewsbury, is the nearest station.