Memories
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Joan Gurney (1938-1951)
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From an early age, trees have been amongst the ten favourite things in my life - some more treasured than others.
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This passion, I am sure, goes back to my school days at Grey Friars when it was part of CCHS. I have shared memories of some of the more iconic trees there in my previous articles for CCHS Newsletters - the Holmoak, the mulberry and the delicious walnut - but it is unusual for a garden to have yew trees except when they are used for hedging, mostly in large country houses; but the original Grey Friars garden had (and still has), not just one, but several mature and ancient yews - and perhaps we might ask why.
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The yew is a very sombre tree, but it has some interesting features, and often, in autumn, its glowing red fruits would form subjects of investigation and illustration in nature and art lessons. We were taught that the leaves and bark were highly toxic, as was the seed inside its attractive crimson jelly. We often watched the birds feasting on the tempting non-toxic outer jelly, and either discarding the harmful seed, or perhaps, with some in born instinct, swallowing both, knowing that the seed would pass through their internal system without being digested. Although we drew and understood the pollination process in thrum-eyes and pin-eyed primroses in spring, we had not related this to the fact that yew trees had male and female flowering parts on separate trees, and this was why some bore berries in autumn, and others never did. The word dioecious did not enter our biological vocabulary until we reached the Senior School at North Hill!
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The yew is extremely long-lived - the famous Fortingall yew in Perthshire is estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old. Yews are difficult to date because the heartwood decays and destroys the evidence provided by ageing rings, so trunk girth remains the only clue. This is also hindered by the fact that the yew’s growth tends to slow down as it ages. A tree surgeon, who was working on the 400 year old Holmoak at Grey Friars in the late 1990s, estimated that the yew tree on the opposite side of the upper terrace lawn was considerably older than this.
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Not all yews are the same variety however. The active yew has a single trunk and a spreading canopy like the one in the picture (left). Another variety has upward sweeping multiple branches resembling a witch’s broomstick. Three of the yews in the Grey Friars garden today appear to be of the former type; the rest are probably of the latter variety and not as old (right).
The wood of the yew was keenly sought after, in earlier times, to make long bows - one was excavated in Clacton, in 1911, which was assumed to have been lost by one of man’s ancestors many thousand years ago. The wood has always been valued as an elegant and precious furniture wood which is also used for inlays.
When I retired from my post at the Adult Community College in 2003, one of the tutors, who was a woodturner, made me a delightful set of
toadstools from the wood of a Grey Friars yew tree which had come down in a storm (left).
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I return now to the question of why yews are found, almost exclusively in churchyards - and by implication, why also at Grey Friars. There are several theories. Firstly, because they are so toxic it was a wise precaution to keep them out of reach of grazing animals, so they were banished to churchyards. Secondly, because of their gloomy appearance, they acquired the symbolism of death and were therefore confined to graveyards where they often acted as grave markers. More recently a new theory has been put forward. It is suggested that as the known sites of plague pits do not seem to match the number of victims claimed by this dreadful disease, yew trees may have been planted over other sites in consecrated ground where their roots would entwine the bodies and act as cleansing agents taking away the evil which had torn that community apart. For these two final reasons, every time a churchyard yew fell, it had to be replaced. Many churchyard yews may not even be Christian plantings at all but the ancient sacred trees of Druids.
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Some, or all of these explanations, fit very neatly into the story of Grey Friars. Alan Skinner and I know, from our research for the Grey Friars book, that the monastery church built and developed between 1269 and the 1500s, would have had a churchyard corresponding to today’s garden at Grey Friars, as the superimposed illustration, c1500, indicates (right), and that today’s yew trees, (marked with stars) also occupy that same space, although many may have been replaced. In 1847 and 1857, during some archaeological excavations, William Wire, the diarist, recorded that skeletons were unearthed close to the original site of the monastery church in consecrated ground. These were assumed to be the remains of several inmates of the
monastery. We are left to draw our own conclusions from the evidence presented here and ponder on which came first, the church or the yew trees.
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At some point in our schooldays, every pupil innocently questions what use certain subjects might be to them in their adult life. Many years into adulthood I discovered how useful Latin was to me in my gardening pursuits and naming of plants. But little did I know that one day my knowledge of the toxicity of the yew and my French language lessons would help me save lives!
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One early autumn in the late 1970s when I was working at the Grey Friars College, I went to my car which was parked by the pedestrian gate in the north boundary wall. Two teenage French boys who had been attending the French Summer School were excitedly gathering handfuls of yew berries. They were chattering away to each other in French and I could pick out the word “mangez” which was repeated over and over again. I knew immediately that they were intending to eat them. Hastily, without thinking about syntax, declension or negative positioning, I shouted to them, “Non! Non! Non! Ne mangez pas!”
They looked at me with astonishment and one said in English with a delightful French accent, “They make you sick?”
“No,” I replied, ”they make you dead.” They quickly flung the berries away and fled.
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My story of the Grey Friars yew trees could not end on a more extraordinary note!
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