What is the oldest tree in York?

The Willow-Leaved Ash in York Museum Gardens, a Yorkshire county champion estimated at up to 150 years old. Its crown has started to die back, which is typical of an ash entering its final decades.

How many champion trees does York Museum Gardens have?

Six. The Tree Register recognises each as the largest recorded example of its cultivar in Yorkshire: a Willow-Leaved Ash, a Cut-Leaved Hornbeam, a Pear-Barked Beech, a Cut-Leaved Alder, an Elaeagnus-Leaved Pear and a Small-Leaved Lime.

Is York Museum Gardens free to visit?

Yes. The gardens are open every day from 9am to 6pm and entry is free, though York Museums Trust, the charity that runs them, welcomes donations.

Where is York Museum Gardens?

On Museum Street in York city centre, beside the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, a 10 minute walk from York railway station.

United Kingdom

Ancient Trees in York

York's most remarkable trees are not scattered across the city but concentrated in one ten-acre garden. The Yorkshire Philosophical Society laid out York Museum Gardens in 1830 around the ruins of St Mary's Abbey and filled it with specimens gathered from across the world. Six of those trees are now official Yorkshire county champions, the largest recorded examples of their kind anywhere in the county: a hollow-trunked hornbeam, a two-tree grafted beech, and a leaning Anatolian pear among them, all free to walk past any day of the year.

The Willow-Leaved Ash

Narrow-Leaved Ash (Fraxinus angustifolia 'Lentiscifolia') · 150 years · York city centre

At twenty-four metres, the Willow-Leaved Ash is the tallest of six trees in York Museum Gardens officially recognised as Yorkshire county champions, the largest recorded example of its kind anywhere in the county. The Tree Register keeps that list, and this ash earned its place with a trunk that measures three and a half metres round and leaves noticeably narrower than an ordinary ash's, more like a willow's, which is where the name comes from. It was planted sometime in the gardens' first century, when the Yorkshire Philosophical Society was still filling the grounds it had laid out around the ruins of St Mary's Abbey with specimens gathered from across the world. The Tree Register puts its age at the top of the 80 to 150 year range shared by the garden's six champions, and its own crown agrees: the upper branches have started to die back, the way an ash tree typically signals it is entering its final decades. It still stands as one of the most noticeable trees in the garden, tall enough to be seen from most of the surrounding lawns. Visit while the crown holds. A champion tree's title from the Tree Register is a record of what was measured and when, never a promise of permanence.

Read more and get directions →

The Cut-Leaved Hornbeam

Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus 'Incisa') · 150 years · York city centre

The Cut-Leaved Hornbeam's trunk is hollow, its canopy hangs low enough to brush the grass, and the whole tree curls into itself rather than growing straight up, more contorted shrub than the neat street tree hornbeams usually become. That shape earned it a place on the Tree Register's list of Yorkshire county champions, the largest recorded example of its cultivar in the county. Ordinary hornbeam wood is famously hard, historically turned into butchers' blocks and mallets because almost nothing else in an English wood could take that kind of daily battering, and this specimen's finely cut, deeply serrated leaves are the whole reason a gardener chose this cultivar over the plain species when the Yorkshire Philosophical Society was planting out its new grounds around the ruins of St Mary's Abbey in the nineteenth century. In autumn its leaves turn a rich golden brown, and the hollow trunk, rather than weakening the tree, has become one of its most photographed features, a reminder that hollowing out is something old trees do to survive, not a sign they are dying. It stands among the garden's roughly 80 to 150 year old champions, part of a small cluster of record-holding trees inside a single city garden.

Read more and get directions →

The Pear-Barked Beech

European Beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Miltonensis') · 150 years · York city centre

Halfway up the trunk of this beech, at almost exactly two metres, the bark changes: rough and fissured like a pear tree's below the line, smooth and grey like an ordinary beech's above it. That is because it is not one tree but two, grafted together when the Yorkshire Philosophical Society was filling York Museum Gardens with botanical curiosities, and the join has held long enough that the tree now stands nineteen metres tall with a trunk almost three metres round, one of Yorkshire's six Tree Register champions inside these ten acres. Pear bark grafted onto beech rootstock, or the other way round (records from the planting era do not say which), was the kind of horticultural party trick Victorian garden designers liked to show off, proof that a garden could out-engineer nature as easily as display it. Two centuries on, most visitors walk past the graft line without noticing it is there at all, distracted by the ruins of St Mary's Abbey behind it or the river beyond the lawn. Look for the seam in the bark at head height and the whole two-tree history becomes obvious in a way no plaque could improve on.

Read more and get directions →

The Cut-Leaved Alder

Common Alder (Alnus glutinosa 'Imperialis') · 150 years · York city centre

On the lawn closest to the River Ouse, the Cut-Leaved Alder produces small woody cones through the whole of winter and reddish-purple catkins every spring, and its leaves are cut so finely they read as feathery rather than solid, moving differently in the wind than every ordinary alder nearby. That difference is why the Tree Register lists it as a Yorkshire county champion, one of six inside York Museum Gardens. Alders are river trees by nature, at home in the wet ground the Ouse leaves behind after York's regular floods, and this one has grown to ten metres with a trunk over a metre and a half round without ever leaving the damp lawn it was planted on. Decay has started at its base, the kind of slow hollowing that in most trees signals age rather than danger, and the Yorkshire Philosophical Society's original nineteenth century planting scheme is the likeliest source for a cultivar this particular. Standing at the garden's low point by the water, it is easy to see why this spot was chosen for it: alders do not just tolerate wet feet, they need them, and the Ouse has kept this one fed for the better part of a century and a half.

Read more and get directions →

The Elaeagnus-Leaved Pear

Elaeagnus-Leaved Pear (Pyrus elaeagrifolia) · 150 years · York city centre

Pyrus elaeagrifolia, the Elaeagnus-Leaved Pear, only reached Britain around 1844, imported from the eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia as a garden curiosity rather than a fruit tree, and York Museum Gardens planted one of the country's earliest examples not long after. It grows at a visibly unusual angle, leaning rather than standing straight, and its narrow, silvery-grey leaves look more like an olive's than a pear's, the resemblance the species name refers to. The Tree Register has measured its girth at over two metres and named it a Yorkshire county champion, the largest recorded example of the species in the county, one of six such champions inside these ten acres beside the ruins of St Mary's Abbey. Its lean has become pronounced enough that York Museums Trust has already taken cuttings, a quiet insurance policy against the day this specific tree eventually comes down, propagating its replacement before the original is gone rather than after. For now it is very much alive and still leaning, one of the garden's 80 to 150 year old champions, an unfamiliar Mediterranean pear still settled at whatever angle its roots have chosen.

Read more and get directions →

The Small-Leaved Lime

Small-Leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · 150 years · York city centre

Tilia cordata, the Small-Leaved Lime, is Britain's only native lime, and in the wild it all but disappears once you travel north of the Midlands, which makes the twenty-five metre example growing in York Museum Gardens an outlier by geography alone before it even earned its Tree Register title. Its trunk measures nearly three metres round, tall and arrow-straight in a garden of stranger, more contorted specimens, and that unusually columnar shape, rather than any historical event, is what put it among the ten-acre garden's six Yorkshire county champions. Small-leaved limes can live for centuries in the wild, some of England's oldest documented trees among them, but the Tree Register's estimate for this specimen sits within the 80 to 150 year range shared by the garden's whole set of champions, planted out after the Yorkshire Philosophical Society began filling the grounds around the ruined St Mary's Abbey in the nineteenth century. Its bright green leaves, heart-shaped and small enough to look almost dainty against its height, turn a clean yellow every autumn. A native tree standing this far outside where its wild relatives usually grow is itself the whole story.

Read more and get directions →

Know an ancient tree in York we missed? Suggest it.

Going there? Download all 6 trees as a map file and open it in Google Maps, Organic Maps or any hiking app. Works offline, no app needed.

Frequently asked

What is the oldest tree in York?: The Willow-Leaved Ash in York Museum Gardens, a Yorkshire county champion estimated at up to 150 years old. Its crown has started to die back, which is typical of an ash entering its final decades.
How many champion trees does York Museum Gardens have?: Six. The Tree Register recognises each as the largest recorded example of its cultivar in Yorkshire: a Willow-Leaved Ash, a Cut-Leaved Hornbeam, a Pear-Barked Beech, a Cut-Leaved Alder, an Elaeagnus-Leaved Pear and a Small-Leaved Lime.
Is York Museum Gardens free to visit?: Yes. The gardens are open every day from 9am to 6pm and entry is free, though York Museums Trust, the charity that runs them, welcomes donations.
Where is York Museum Gardens?: On Museum Street in York city centre, beside the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, a 10 minute walk from York railway station.
More on the oldest tree: What is the oldest tree in York? The full answer, with map and directions.
More like this: Browse themed collections of remarkable trees.
Ancient trees in more cities: Amsterdam · Lisbon · London · Paris · Rome · Tokyo · Istanbul · Barcelona · Kyoto · Madrid · New York · Dublin · Edinburgh · Brussels · Antwerp · Vienna · Prague · Berlin · Seville · Porto · Athens · Florence · Milan · Venice · Munich · Nice · Lyon · Valencia · Malaga · Granada · Naples · Bologna · Verona · Palermo · Cadiz · Sintra

Know a tree that belongs on this list? Send it in. Suggestions feed curation; the list itself stays editorial.

Walk all 6 trees about 0.3 km, 4 min on foot