Glendalough

Arboretum and Fruticetum (part III) 1838 recorded that the Glendalough Yew was ‘an immense tree, and shaded from the sun and the storm, not only the ruins of a small church under it, but the greater part of the churchyard. Hayes was informed, on undoubted authority, that on one hot summer’s day, when the tree was in its full beauty, the agent for the Bishop to whom the church belonged, had all its principal limbs and branches cut off close by the trunk and sold. About 40 years afterwards, when Hayes saw it, the trunk was decaying at the heart, and a holly was growing up through one of the fissures’.