Veteran yew beneath slopes of Brown Clee

It looks like the interior of a cave - but I took this picture inside one of the oldest yew trees in Shropshire.

Veteran yew beneath slopes of Brown Clee

This gnarled and twisted veteran stands in the churchyard at Loughton, beneath Brown Clee, and is about 1,000 years old.

It has a girth of nine metres, but even so it was a bit of a squeeze to fit into the hollow trunk with my camera and tripod.

I was there as part of a long-term project to photograph all the notable yew trees in Shropshire, so it was good to tick this one off the list.

Interestingly, a sample of the yew was carbon dated at Cambridge University in 1986, making it the first in the world to have its age determined by this method.

 

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