Chilham

March 1999 Tim Hills: The 1790 drawing must cause us to wonder how many large churchyard yews were trimmed in this manner. Arthur Mee (1936) thought ‘the old yew by the gate must have been growing when the church was built’. The tree lost all of its branches in 1987 when the churchyard lost half of its mature trees. This protected stump will be a feature in the churchyard for decades. Meredith’s gazetteer also records a 30′ girthed yew cut down before 1790.