Whatcombe

Lowe 1987 (The Yew trees of Great Britain and Ireland): “At Watcombe (Whatcombe) a lone farm on the road from Hungerford to Wantage, there is, says a writer to the Times (1890), “a very interesting group of venerable yews, on the site of a cell or grange, with a church attached, belonging to a pre-Reformation days to the Benedictine Monastery of Hurley, to which house it may have been given by Geoffrey de Mabdeville about 1086, and mentioned in Pipe Rolls as being the charge of a provost in 1156.”
These yews are planted in double rows forming alleys. The enclosure from ‘time out of mind’ has been known by country people as ‘Paradise.’ A pair of yews a little to the rear of Paradise are known as Adam and Eve. They are male and female, ‘Adam’ being of a darker shade than his companion ‘Eve’. The former measures over 9 feet in girth, and the latter 10 feet. Standing alone, at some distance in the background, farthest removed from Paradise, is the ‘Serpent’ or ‘Devil.’ This tree, the hollow trunk of which is reduced to a shell, but carries a flourishing head measuring over 20 feet in circumference, must be a far older tree than ‘Adam’ or ‘Eve’, which cannot have been planted much over 200 years.”
In 1981 Allen Meredith writes: “At Watcombe I found the much celebrated yews called Adam and Eve. Both of these trees are now near a modern building. One measured 12ft at 3ft from the ground, the other 11ft 2ins at 4ft. They stood between house and pond, only 5 feet apart, the larger on the left as we look at them from the pond; they are both quite separate fromthe other trees which surround the pond. The yews can be seen in columns, some actually meeting each other at the base of the trunks. Leaving Adam and Eve I approached the yews on the left of the pond. The 1st measured 7ft 11ins, the 2nd 6ft 6ins. Next a small yew with trunk cut off, another yew 6ft girth and nearby another with trunk cut off. Other trees, particularly those which formed part of the yew avenue measured on average 5ft in girth, in fact three measured 5ft, another 4ft 7ins, another 4ft 8ins, another 4ft 2ins. All these yews according to old records are well over 100 years old, so growth rate in some cases appears to have been very slow. Adam and Eve have both been damaged through the loss of large limbs but despite this appear to be quite healthy.