Yew Tree Cottage, The Yew In Local Place Names

History of Yew Tree Cottages and their Yews

On finding such yews, one wonders how long have the cottages been named after their yews and how old are their trees? Look again at the topiary of the King Somborne yew illustrated above; its stem is narrow, below a girth of 4’. Yet the owners are certain the topiary is at least 100 years old. I was shown a photo from the 1930’s that showed the yew virtually unchanged. Clipping yew foliage certainly rejuvenates the trees growth so I would expect getting reliable age estimates from girth sizes of regularly clipped trees will be misleading. The annual tree ring growth must be extremely small.

Checking how long yew tree cottages have been so named has proved problematic. Some I found were newly named and a few were recently built.  Most of the owners I interviewed did not know the history of their property, and those that did had only hearsay evidence.

I only met one owner, in Crawley, who had thoroughly researched the history of his house with success. He told me it was first recorded as Yew Tree Cottage in1785, though the house was probably older. His yew has a girth of 10' 10'' at ground level. The owner knew of no other yew ever being present on site. So the question remains, is this yew big enough to have lent its name to the cottage 220 years age? See the Crawley picture above. The jury is still out…