Coleshill - churchyard

In 1833 W.T.Bree wrote the following:’In proof of the toughness and durability of the yew, I may here mention a circumstance relating to a tree of this species in Coleshill churchyard, Warwickshire. The tree consists of a mere thin hollow shell, not more than half of the whole circumference, and carries, perhaps, its due proportion of top and branches. More than forty years ago, a near relative of mine, as I have often heard him state, once stood for half an hour watching this tree during a tempestuous gale of wind, in order to witness its fall, expecting every moment that it must inevitably be blown down, it bent, and wreathed, and twisted so, under the influence of the boisterous elements. My friend has been dead some years; the yew remains to this day precisely in the same condition in which it existed when I first knew it in my childhood’. There is no sign of the tree today.