Preaux- Saint- Sebastien

In Arcisse de Caumont’s 1867 Statistique monumental du Calvados, vol 5 page 749, he describes this yew at Préaux, (Préaux-Saint-Sébastien since 1967). He wrote that ‘you can see, in the cemetery, a very beautiful yew, that has a 4 metre 20 cm of girth’.
In 2018 I recorded he following girths: 5.45m at 30cm (just above the roots); 5.31m at 1m over some thin ivy; 5.52m at 130cm, just below the bulges. This shows an increase somewhere between 111cm and 132cm in 151 years. A single gap about 60cm high reveals that the yew is hollow. As new wood is laid down the gap will disappear and there will be no obvious way of appreciating that this is a completely hollow tree. At a height of about 3m begins an outpouring of substantial branches.