The ancient yew

The gnarled, immutable yew tree is one of the most evocative sights in the British and Irish landscape, an evergreen impression of immortality that for centuries has marked holy places for travellers.

In this book Robert Bevan Jones paints a many-sided portrait of this extraordinary tree and of the role it has played in history.

The author explores the botanical, historical, cultural and archaeological connections of the yew, Taxus baccata.

He reviews the various attempts that have been made to date ancient yew trees, and concludes that many of them are certainly over a thousand years old; some of the oldest specimens may even be linked to the cells of early Celtic Saints.

The book includes photographic portraits of famous ancient yews by landscape photographers Andy McGeeney and Mick Sharp, as well as beautiful nineteenth-century etchings.

It also includes a gazetteer of the oldest and largest yew trees in Britain, with Ordance Survey grid reference locations.

The Ancient Yew is a cultural flora of a single species: a tree which provides a living link between our own landscapes and those of the distant past.