The Medieval Yews of John of
Gaunt’s Deer Park and the surrounding area
By Peter Andrews
John of Gaunt’s Deer Park and J.P. Williams-Freeman
I came across my first reference to old yews at John of Gaunt’s
deer park in English Downland (1936) by H.J. Massingham. In The
Ancient Yew (2002), Robert Bevan-Jones relates the discovery in
1912 of old yews growing on the boundary banks of John of Gaunt’s
deer park. The original source of information for both authors
was J.P. Williams-Freeman’s book, Field Archaeology As Illustrated
by Hampshire, published in 1915. This book still provides an excellent,
easy to read guide to historic sites across Hampshire.
J.P. Williams-Freeman, a doctor by profession, recognized that
keeping records of old yews (even those of no great girth) on
earthworks might provide information of historical importance
to researchers of the future. As well as yews on the boundary
banks of the deer park he reported yews at nearby Danebury Hill
and Merdon Castle.
When J.P. Williams-Freeman visited the deer park, he walked from
the hamlet of Horsebridge through idyllic water meadows towards
King’s Somborne from where he could view the southern boundary
bank. In his book he wrote, ‘Walking up through the meadow,
we see the bank at its best on the right-hand side, where it stands
in places 12 feet in height, and is crowned in one place by a
fine yew, 15ft. 9in. in girth at 3 feet from the ground’.
A mile to the north of the southern boundary, J.P. Williams-Freeman
also recorded old yews on the boundary banks of the appropriately
named Yew Hill. He wrote, ‘These yews, which are of great
age, may be the descendants (but are most probably the originals)
of ones planted in the thirteenth century when the park was made’.
‘They are not of very great size on this exposed hill, the
largest only measuring 12 feet in girth at 3 feet from the ground’.
‘They show what is of course well known, that yew is not
poisonous to deer under ordinary conditions’. ‘The
boundary of this part of the park is merely a broad bank about
3 feet high, and from an earthwork point of view is not worth
the climb’. The uninteresting nature of the archaeology
on Yew Hill suggests to me that J.P. Williams-Freeman spent little
time exploring the northern boundary bank, otherwise he would
surely have recorded the larger yews I will describe later. The
yews he measured were almost certainly those on the surviving
part of the eastern boundary bank.
At the English Heritage National Record Centre in Swindon, I
found the surviving boundary banks clearly shown on large scale
early editions of the Ordnance Survey maps of the King’s
Somborne area. These maps were made from an 1870 survey and would
have been an invaluable resource to J.P. Williams-Freeman during
his study of the deer park. When I compared the old map with a
current Explorer map showing the deer park, I saw that even in
this rural area there had been much change since J.P. Williams-Freeman
visited. On top of Yew Hill behind How Farm was a Tarmac works
with a quarry. Along the course of the southern boundary bank
where J.P. Williams-Freeman recorded his solitary large yew, a
row of houses had been built. I could find no recent information
on the yews recorded here by J.P. Williams-Freeman and decided
to visit and find out what had become of them.
John of Gaunt’s Deer Park 2006
Yew Hill consists mostly of two very large arable fields lying
to the south and east of the Tarmac works. Surprisingly there
are still yews growing along the surviving boundary banks marked
on the map. I obtained permission to climb up from Hooper’s
Bottom to view the yews on the northern boundary bank. From below,
the closely planted line of yews looked particularly impressive
high on the ridge. The owner informed me that only a few of the
yews that had been planted on the continuing eastern bank were
on her land. The other yews here, beyond the fence line, were
on the land owned by Tarmac, for which permission would be needed
to visit.
Fig 1. Yews mark the northern boundary bank on Yew Hill, seen from
Hooper’s Bottom
© Peter Andrews
Reaching the ridge near the top of the hill, I found that a
number of the old yews on the northern boundary bank were larger
than I had expected. Many of these old yews had been pollarded
a long time ago. The two largest were growing close together and
both had a girth of 16 feet at 3 feet from the ground. Each of
these yews, like most of the others, showed considerable storm
damage, one had a solid lower trunk but the upper was missing.
The other, a low pollard, had split in two. Another with a girth
of 15ft (4.57 metres) and much of its trunk of dead wood had only
two branches showing signs of life (see fig 3, the yew in the
foreground). Despite the many storms which have battered the old
yews in this exposed spot, they had not fallen, demonstrating
the yew’s ability to adapt to adverse circumstances.
Fig 2. One of the largest northern boundary bank yews - l6ft in
girth
© Peter Andrews
The thin chalky soil on top of the northern boundary banks has
eroded away to expose the upper roots of the yews growing here.
These roots have spread out over the bank and down its sides.
Many of the venerable yews have 2-3 younger yews of various sizes
growing close to their aged trunks. The appearance of the younger
yews here convinces me that they have grown from aerial roots
sent down by the old yews to anchor themselves to the bank. The
branches embedded in the bank have broken, or in most cases, been
cut away. Although the young yews are now separated from the parent
tree, their roots have become intertwined, helping to strengthen
both.
Fig 3. Medieval yews on the northern boundary bank
© Peter Andrews
I obtained permission from the manager of Tarmac on Yew Hill
to record the yews on the eastern boundary bank. I would have
to access the yews here from the crop field due to a sheer chalk
bank above the road within the works. The manager explained that
Tarmac were under obligation to protect the yews during the building
of the plant 30 years ago. The deer park’s eastern boundary
bank would have continued southwards down the hill to King’s
Sombome. This part of the bank, along with any yews that were
growing on it, had vanished when the deer park was broken up for
farmland during the mid 17th century.
The largest yew I recorded on the deer park’s low eastern
bank was 13ft. 6in. (4.11 metres) at 3 feet from the ground. Six
other yews here had girths in the region of 12ft (3.66 metres).
Those yews growing directly above the quarry were unfortunately
covered in a chalky white dust. The yews on the eastern bank grow
on the highest and most exposed part of the hill and it is possible
that the largest specimens here are equal in age to those on the
northern bank.
Many of the yews on the eastern bank have been pollarded, the
time of planting suggesting pollarding for bow staves. Much of
the western slopes of Yew Hill was quarried away during the building
of the Andover to Redbridge railway. In one of the few places
where the original part of the hill has survived, I found a few
old pollarded yews, one 14ft. (4.27 metes) in girth. In my opinion
these yews are remnants of deliberate plantings within the once
well wooded deer park.
Fig 4. Old pollarded yew on the western slopes of Yew Hill
© Peter Andrews
A closer inspection of the current O.S. Explorer map showing
King’s Somborne revealed that sections of the southern boundary
bank could be traced to the front gardens of the houses here.
Leaving King’s Somborne village along the busy Romsey road,
we discovered a section of the high boundary bank in a garden,
complete with the large yew recorded by J.P. Williams-Freeman.
The owners, justifiably proud of the yew had fittingly called
their house Yew Bank. They knew that the yew was growing on the
deer park’s historic boundary bank and were pleased to hear
something of the old tree’s history. Together we measured
the aged trunk at 3 feet from the ground and recorded a girth
of 16 feet, nearly 5 metres in girth. The yew had grown only 3
inches since J.P. Williams-Freeman’s measurement of nearly
a century ago. The trunk of the yew has become a hollow shell
and through a gap could be seen a large internal stem. I explained
to the owners how in time the shell of the old trunk would break
away and the inner stem would become the new tree. They agreed
with the need to record their yew now, so that any visiting researchers
of the future, finding an apparently young yew here, would know
its true age.
The owner mentioned that the yew had remained unchanged in the
30 years that she had lived in the house. She also told an enchanting
story about the old yew, from a time when her children were young
and had birthday parties with their fiends, many who came from
the village. Before the party began she would hide bags of treats
inside the old yew and among its branches for a treasure hunt
later in the day. During the game the children would discover
their treasure in the yew, which became known as their magic tree.
Before leaving King’s Somborne I paid a visit to John of
Gaunt’s palace site behind the church in the village. Black’s
Guide to Hampshire (1897) described ‘time-honoured yews
flourishing about the ruins’ of John of Gaunt’s palace,
which was later rebuilt into a manor house and was still standing
in 1734. By 1840 the remains were only 14ft high when it was demolished,
and the material used to construct the nearby school and flint
walls around the church. Any old yews growing here may have been
cleared away at the time. King’s Somborne Palace is now
recorded in the Ancient Yew Group’s Gazetteer as a ‘lost
yew’ site.
All that remains today of the palace are a few grass covered
mounds and banks. Hampshire County Council have set up some excellent
information boards detailing the history of both palace and deer
park. It was here that I saw for the first time the name William
de Briwere, who created the deer park in 1200, when it was known
as How Park. It appears that naming the deer park after King’s
Somborne’s most famous resident, John of Gaunt, is comparatively
recent.
John of Gaunt (1340-1399) inherited the manor of Somborne through
an advantageous marriage, which also saw him become the Duke of
Lancaster. John of Gaunt was the fourth son of Edward III and
his eldest brother was the Black Prince. John of Gaunt was really
the power behind the throne during the reign of Richard II. In
the year that John of Gaunt died, his son deposed Richard II and
became Henry IV (1399-1413). The manor of Somborne with the deer
park now became a Royal Estate and so it remained until fairly
recent times. It is documented that there were still 200 deer
in the park as late as 1591. Some of the pollarded yews may certainly
date from the time of John of Gaunt, but in my opinion it was
William de Briwere who was responsible for the planting of the
oldest yews on the deer park’s boundary banks.
William de Briwere and How Park
In the year 1200 William de Briwere was given a charter by his
good friend King John to hunt hare, fox, cat and wolf in How Park
at Somborne. William de Briwere soon availed himself of this permission,
enclosed How Park and stocked it with deer. The boundary banks
of the deer park enclosed an oblong area of 400 acres. Much of
the western half of the park comprised the low lying water meadows
of the River Test. The name of the park comes from a William de
Ow, who was given the manor of King’s Somborne shortly after
the conquest.
The original name of the deer park is retained locally in How
Farm on Yew Hill, which was built on the site of William de Briwere’s
hunting lodge. There is still a sign to How Park at King’s
Somborne by the old road to Stockbridge.
William de Briwere came from obscure beginnings but is known
to have followed his father to become chief forester of the Forest
of Bere. At some point he was noticed by Richard I and became
a trusted loyal justice and administrator. Among other offices,
he was at times sheriff of many counties, including Nottingham,
while Richard Coeur-de-Lion was on crusade: this makes him Robin
Hood’s notorious adversary. In 1190, for services rendered,
William de Briwere was given the important manor of Somborne with
much of its hundred from Longstock in the north to Romsey in the
south.
It is said that William de Briwere was much disliked and an
extortioner, but that he knew his place and was one of the few
men that the untrustworthy King John greatly admired. Through
his friendship with King John and a marriage to the daughter of
the Earl of Devon, William de Briwere would become one of the
most wealthy and powerful men in the realm. In 1201 he founded
a priory of Augustinian monks at Mottisfont, a few miles to the
south of King’s Somborne. At Mottisfont I have discovered
a number of old yews, at least one of which may be of comparable
age to those at the deer park.
Mottisfont Abbey, William de Briwere and the Yew
Opposite the walls of Mottisfont Abbey a number of yews have
been planted by the roadside to mark its boundary. Today these
yews stand on the edge of the village gardens. The largest was
planted at the north end of the Abbey by the old road to King’s
Somborne. This impressive yew has a girth of nearly 17ft. (5.18
metres). Its trunk is hollow with a clearly visible long thin
internal stem. I suspect that William de Briwere had the yew placed
here to mark the site of his priory and to purify its boundary.
The other nearby yews could date from the same period but were
probably added at a later date by the monks. Nearby on the outskirts
of the village on the edge of a narrow lane leading to the Abbey,
another old marker yew is found.
Fig 5. Trunk of old yew with internal stem at Mottisfont, Hampshire
© Peter Andrews
I believe that William de Briwere planted yews for both practical
and spiritual reasons. Not only would the yews at the deer park
provide shelter for his deer, their position high on the hill
would provide a highly visible marker that this was his land.
To many in medieval England the yew was still revered as a sacred
tree. To the English nobles the yew would seem to have mythical
qualities because in the hands of their highly skilled archers
the yew longbow would win them many battles. I am convinced that
William de Briwere held the belief of the ecclesiastical orders
that the planting of the Sacred Yew would ward off evil and protect
the people living within its boundary. In 1215 King John and William
de Briwere, at the Barons’ insistence, signed the Magna
Carta and it is significant that the place chosen was either under
or within sight of the Great Yew at Ankerwyke. In 1200, the year
that William de Briwere built his deer park, he also fortified
a hill at Ashley above Kings Somborne.
A Lost Giant at Ashley and the Yews of the Surrounding
Countryside.
Shortly after William de Briwere completed his castle at Ashley,
he had a church built in its outer bailey. Today all that remains
of the castle are the earthwork mound and ditches, now thickly
covered in yew and ash. The church itself seems unchanged and
looking around its damp and musty interior, I was astonished to
find a photograph of a large yew lying on its side in the churchyard,
having fallen during the severe storm of 1990. The villagers had
simply called their unfortunate tree the ‘Great Yew’,
and from the photograph it certainly looked much larger that the
surviving churchyard yew. Another photograph in the church shows
the small community gathered together in the churchyard a year
later to plant a cutting from the ancient yew, this is still thriving.
It is fascinating to contemplate that William de Briwere chose
to build his castle with its church on a hill at the site of an
old yew tree.
Along three miles of the boundary between the parishes of King’s
Sombome and Ashley, an extraordinary number of yews have been
planted. From the appearance of most of these I would suggest
that the majority are later plantings than those in the nearby
deer park. William de Briwere gave the land at Ashley towards
the living of the monks at Mottisfont. During the reign of John
of Gaunt’s son, Henry IV, Somborne became a royal estate.
The yews were probably planted by the monastic order to separate
their land from that of the King.
Two larger and possibly older yews on the parish boundary mark
the crossroads where the road from King’s Somborne leads
uphill to Ashley. The two yews here have the dense spray which
is a characteristic of regularly cut roadside yews and are thus
impossible to measure. These two old yews are separated from the
others on the parish boundary, but form part of a long line of
yews that follows the road eastwards below Ashley before turning
southwards along an ancient trackway, then east again across the
West Forest of Bere. This forest is now a large private estate
and the boundary yews that cross it may be older. One of the estate
yews is marked on an early edition O.S. map made from an 1870
survey. I have only been able to view a few of the yews on the
estate from a distance, being unable to gain access. From the
West Forest of Bere, there are fine views to the south of the
dense yew stands on Beacon Hill.
Yews at Stockbridge
North of How Park, William de Briwere enclosed a smaller area
for deer which has become known as North Park. The now empty farm
here was built on the site of a hunting lodge. Four old yews have
been planted by the roadside just outside of the farm. Another
large spreading yew stands slightly to the east of the farm by
an old trackway. The yews here reach 14ft. (4.27 metres) in girth
and stand very close to the Stockbridge/Kings Somborne parish
boundary.
Fig 6 . Yews at North Park
© Peter Andrews
Not far from North Park on the edge of Stockbridge Down, five
yews of similar girth grow on the Stockbridge/Little Somborne
parish boundary. As at Ashley, much of the land at Stockbridge
was given by William de Briwere to the monks at Mottisfont. Just
outside of the village of Stockbridge on the edge of the King’s
Somborne road, a yew stands alone in the middle of a small roundabout
by a group of houses known as the Milsons. During my research
I discovered that William de Briwere had a large mill in the water
meadows near the village. His son, also named William, gave the
generous gift of the mill to the priory at Mottisfont. I believe
that this might be a yew planted by the monks to mark their important
acquisition. This large spreading tree has a girth of 15ft. (4.47
metres).
Fig 7. The Milson Yew, Stockbridge
It is written that William de Briwere at certain times liked
to dress and live as a monk in the three Abbeys that he founded,
perhaps as a penance for misdeeds. After his death he was buried
under the high alter in his Cistercian Abbey at Dunkeswell in
Devon, a county in which he also held vast estates. Both the Abbey
at Dunkeswell and William de Briwere’s tomb were totally
destroyed in Henry VIIIs dissolution. It is a fitting memorial
to this remarkable man that so many of the yews that he and his
monastic orders planted remain today.
References.
J.P. Williams-Freeman, Field Archaeology As Illustrated
by Hampshire, Macmillian, 1915.
Robert Bevan-Jones, The Ancient Yew,
Windgather Press, 2002.
Hal Hartzell Jr., The Yew Tree: A Thousand Whispers,
Hulogosi, 1991.
Anand Chetan and Diana Brueton, The Sacred Yew,
Penguin/Arkana, 1994.
Constable, The Victorian County History of Hampshire,
1911 edition.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Paul Greenwood, Personal correspondence
A special thank you to Lesley who gave invaluable help and accompanied
me on many adventures.
© Copyright: Peter Andrews.
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