Churchyards and Yew Trees
Discover Ancient Yew Trees in the Open Church Network Churchyards

In Christianity the yew is a symbol for the Resurrection. In an OCN graveyard at Hanmer a yew survived being on fire three times during the fire which badly damaged the church in 1889. The dark evergreens were symbolic of both sorrow and immortality in Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse cultures. Christianity adopted sites from early religous practice, which may explain why so many yew trees are older than the churches they surround. Yew trees are poisonous and need to be fenced off from animals.

The oldest yews in Wrexham County Borough are to be found in the OCN churchyards of All Saints Church in Gresford and St. Mary the Virgin Church in Overton. Those in Overton are one of the traditional seven wonders of Wales.

On strictly practical lines, Edward I instructed yews be planted to protect churches from storms. The elastic wood is suitable for making the deadly longbows that made the bowmen of Wales so famous The church, however, would not allow the use of churchyard yews for this purpose – indeed they were the only yew trees not so used. Today yew tree trimmings are collected for derivation of chemicals used in modern medecine.

The longbow was replaced by firearms, not because the slow-to-load and inaccurate firearms were better – which they weren’t, at least not for another 200 years – but due to lack of suitable material; by Elizabethan times there was no useful yew wood remaining in Europe.