Brimpsfield, Gloucestershire

Grow your own arches

The other night I gave a talk in the Cotswold village of Brimpsfield and, arriving early as I often do, had time for a short walk around before I was due to set up my projector and get on my hind legs to speak. Beautiful as is the stone architecture of the place, I was particularly struck by the series of arches through which the path to the church runs. These arches are not made of stone or any other masonry, but out of yew trees, pairs of them artfully clipped into large rectangles with openings in the middle to accommodate the path.

I’m a great admirer of churchyard yew trees, have posted about one particularly ancient specimen before, and can think of few better ways to approach a church than through these arches. They provide not only wonderful greenery, but also green shade (it was a very hot day) and, as you look back westwards towards the setting sun, a backlit rim of pale green around the edge of each opening. In truth, the yews looked as if they needed clipping, but the slightly fuzzy edges only added to their charm.* On a quiet summer’s evening they seemed just right.

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*The jasmine round my own front door needs trimming, so I have such tasks on my conscience.

Much Marcle, Herefordshire

Growing your own buildings

I used to smile at Arthur Mee, the author of a series of mid-20th century county guides called ‘The King’s England’ who, whenever he encountered an unusually large tree, recorded its girth measurement for his readers. I imagined him whipping out his tape measure with glee and chuckling over the figures, like a trainspotter or a twitcher or the composer Anton Bruckner, who liked obsessively to count the leaves on trees.

And then today I encountered this magnificent specimen, and began to think that perhaps Mee had a point. It’s the yew tree next to the parish church at Much Marcle, Herefordshire, and its hollow trunk has enough space inside for three benches. I began to wonder whether, if we could grow buildings, they would look like this. And I began to wonder too just how big this monster is. I do not travel with a tape measure, but a notice in the church porch enlightened me. When the girth of the trunk was measured in 2006, it was found to be 30 ft 11 ins. What’s more the notice goes on to say that the best estimate of the tree’s age is 1,500 years. In other words, it was planted in around the year 500, about 90 years after the Romans pulled out of Britain, and around the time that the Britons (led, according to some, by the legendary King Arthur) were said to be beating the stuffing out of Saxon invaders at the Battle of Mons Badonicus. So this tree has been here longer than any extant standing English building, Roman ruins excepted, and its spreading branches are still pushing out abundant greenery. They way it has, as it were, invited human shelterers inside its trunk while also continuing its vigorous growth is admirable, and rather humbling.

I’ve got a good long surveyor’s tape in the shed somewhere. Perhaps now I’ll keep it in the boot of the car…


The yew tree, almost completely hiding the spacious nave of Much Marcle church