Craig - y - dorth

In spite of its small girth this yew has many features associated with veteran and ancient yews. Its trunk is completely hollow, there is a lot of deadwood, and it seems to have developed a natural pollard form, which would probably place it in the ancient category if it were another species. Girth, measured at its narrowest at about 0.3m height, is only 3.70m. My observation of yews outside of churchyards is that they are more poorly grown than those within churchyards, and woodland yews with this sort of girth are usually solid and show little sign of rot/decay. It seems from the shape and crown that a reasonably significant part of the tree has come away in the past, although there is now no evidence of this on the ground, just the marks of excess cutting of branches on the NE side. This has been exacerbated by heavy pruning for the access track.