Some of the oldest living things in Sussex are not hidden away in remote woodland. They are standing in churchyards.
Across East Sussex, enormous yew trees grow beside churches that are themselves hundreds of years old. At places such as Crowhurst, Wilmington and Rotherfield, the trunks have expanded, hollowed and regenerated through centuries of English history.
But that raises an intriguing question.
Did the church come to the yew, or did the yew come to the church?
There is a long-running theory that some ancient yews were already sacred before Christianity arrived and that early churches were deliberately established at places important to pagan communities. Another explanation is that Christians planted yews themselves because their evergreen foliage and extraordinary longevity made them natural symbols of eternal life.
There is also a much simpler possibility: churchyards were protected places where ancient trees were allowed to survive while the landscape around them changed.
I spent several days visiting ancient yews across East Sussex to see what remained and whether the relationship between these remarkable trees and our churches was really as straightforward as it first appeared.
How old are ancient yew trees?
Dating a yew is surprisingly difficult.
With many trees, age can be estimated by counting annual growth rings. Ancient yews cause a problem because their trunks frequently become hollow as they grow older. The original heartwood — along with the earliest growth rings — can disappear completely.
Instead, researchers use a combination of trunk girth, growth form, historical measurements and documentary evidence.
That means claims that a particular yew is exactly 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000 years old should usually be treated cautiously.
What isn’t in doubt is that some Sussex yews are extraordinarily old.
A trunk measuring seven, eight or even nine metres around is not simply an old garden tree. These are living structures that have survived centuries of storms, changing land ownership, rebuilding and human activity.
And some of the largest stand beside very old churches.
Crowhurst – did the yew come first?
St George’s Church at Crowhurst was an obvious place to begin.
The enormous yew dominates part of the churchyard, its great trunk showing the strange combination of decay and regeneration that allows these trees to survive for so long.
Crowhurst also has remarkably early Christian associations. A church was established here during the Anglo-Saxon period, centuries before the Norman Conquest.
There is even a tradition connecting the great yew with events surrounding 1066.
Whether every part of that tradition can be historically verified is another matter, but it leaves us with an intriguing possibility: the yew may already have been a substantial tree while Anglo-Saxon Sussex was still taking shape around it.
If it predates the earliest Christian use of the site, why was the church established here?
Was the tree important already?
Or are we simply looking at a very long-lived tree that happened to survive beside an early church?
That question follows us throughout the journey.
Wilmington – a church in an ancient landscape
The yew at Wilmington is even more spectacular.
Its sprawling limbs now require substantial supports, and its enormous girth makes it one of the great ancient yews of Sussex.
Beside it stands the medieval church of St Mary and St Peter.
But climb onto the Downs behind Wilmington and the story becomes much older.
The surrounding landscape contains prehistoric burial monuments, including Neolithic and Bronze Age remains. Above the village is the Long Man of Wilmington, whose own date and origins remain debated.
Whatever we believe about the Long Man, this was clearly a landscape used and marked by people thousands of years before the medieval church appeared.
That does not prove the Wilmington yew was a pagan sacred tree.
But it does demonstrate something important: Christian churches were sometimes established within landscapes that already carried deep human meaning.
Which brings us to the pagan theory.
Were ancient yews sacred before Christianity?
The idea is attractive.
Yews are evergreen. They can regenerate even as their trunks hollow and decay. Individual trees can survive for extraordinary lengths of time.
It is easy to understand why such a tree might acquire spiritual significance.
One theory suggests that some yews were already associated with sacred places before Christianity spread through Anglo-Saxon England. Churches could then have been established at or close to those existing gathering places as Christianity gradually replaced older beliefs.
There are historical examples of Christianity adopting or repurposing earlier customs and places.
But there is a danger in taking the argument too far.
An ancient yew beside a church does not automatically prove that pagans worshipped beneath it.
The archaeological evidence is rarely that convenient.
Warbleton – a church on much older ground
St Mary the Virgin at Warbleton gives us one of the most intriguing locations in the story.
The present church dates mainly from the 13th century, but it stands on a Neolithic mound — evidence that people were already shaping and using this spot thousands of years before the church was built.
An ancient yew also survives in the churchyard.
That does not prove that the mound was once a pagan sacred site, or that the yew itself was connected with pre-Christian worship. But it does show how difficult it can be to separate the different layers of history at places like this.
Long before the medieval church appeared, this ground already mattered enough for people to alter it.
Later it became a Christian place of worship.
And today an ancient yew stands alongside it.
Warbleton therefore brings us back to the central question: when Christianity established itself in these old landscapes, was it creating entirely new sacred places — or sometimes giving new meaning to places that were already significant?
Rotherfield – Christianity arrives in Sussex
The story becomes particularly interesting at Rotherfield.
Christian worship was established here very early, during the Anglo-Saxon period, and the enormous yew beside St Denys is itself considered ancient.
To understand why that matters, we have to go back further.
Christianity had existed in Roman Britain, but the Anglo-Saxon peoples who settled much of southern England initially followed their own pre-Christian religions.
Sussex was relatively late to convert.
Christianity spread through the kingdom of the South Saxons during the later seventh century, and by the eighth century established Christian communities and churches were appearing across the region.
If some of today’s great yews were already growing during that period, then it is at least possible that individual trees witnessed the transition from pagan Anglo-Saxon Sussex to Christian Sussex.
Unfortunately, a hollow yew cannot tell us what people believed beneath its branches.
Perhaps the yew became Christian
There is another explanation.
Yew symbolism fits Christianity remarkably well.
The tree remains green through winter. It can live for centuries. Even apparently dying trees can produce new growth from within old trunks.
Those characteristics made the yew an obvious symbol of eternal life, resurrection and continuity beyond death.
Churchyards themselves reinforced the association.
So perhaps many yews were deliberately planted beside churches after Christianity was already established.
This almost certainly happened in some places.
It also means we should not expect every churchyard yew to have the same history. A younger tree beside a much older church may simply have been planted as part of a long Christian tradition.
An enormous ancient specimen may present a much more difficult question.
Ninfield – when an old tree becomes part of folklore
The yew at St Mary the Virgin in Ninfield was one of the most visually interesting trees I visited.
Rather than forming a single conventional trunk, its ancient structure has become fragmented into multiple living sections.
Local tradition also attached religious imagery to the tree. An angel was once said to be visible within its form before storm damage altered its appearance.
Whether we see an angel or merely the shapes created by an extraordinary old tree is beside the point.
It demonstrates something very human.
We tell stories about ancient things.
A tree can begin as part of the natural landscape and later become a landmark, a religious symbol, a piece of folklore and eventually a protected historical feature.
The meaning changes even when the tree remains.
Other ancient yews of East Sussex
My exploration also took me to several other churchyards.
At Etchingham, the ancient yew has begun separating into major sections as its enormous trunk continues to hollow.
At Herstmonceux, another substantial yew stands beside the attractive setting of All Saints Church.
At Buxted, St Margaret’s Church and its ancient yew have survived while much of the historic village itself shifted elsewhere. Today the isolated church sits within the landscaped surroundings of Buxted Park.
These locations reinforce just how widespread the association between old churches and old yews has become.
But they also raise another question.
If ancient churches and ancient yews naturally belong together, shouldn’t every very old church have one?
Bishopstone – an ancient church without an ancient yew
St Andrew’s Church at Bishopstone provides a useful comparison.
It contains very early surviving Christian fabric and is one of the oldest churches in this part of Sussex.
Yet there is no recorded ancient yew there comparable with the great specimens at Crowhurst, Wilmington or Rotherfield.
That matters.
It tells us that:
ancient church does not automatically equal ancient yew.
The chalk landscape around Bishopstone is perfectly capable of supporting yew trees, so geology alone does not provide an obvious answer either.
Whatever created the remarkable concentrations of ancient yews in some churchyards was clearly not universal.
And the reverse is also true.
An ancient yew without a church
Deep near Wych Cross on Ashdown Forest I found an ancient yew growing away from a traditional parish churchyard.
It was very different from the better-known churchyard trees.
Surrounded by mature woodland and fallen beech trees, it looked battered and rather neglected. Its crown was sparse and only limited fresh growth was obvious.
Nearby stands Ashdown Park, later developed as a private estate and eventually associated with religious buildings of its own.
But those buildings came much later than the ancient yew.
The tree therefore gives us an important control.
Yews can become ancient without a medieval church beside them.
And its condition suggests another possible reason why so many extraordinary specimens have survived in churchyards.
Did churchyards simply protect them?
Perhaps protection is part of the answer.
Over the centuries huge areas of woodland were cleared. Fields were created. Roads, villages and estates expanded. Individual trees outside protected places would have been felled, damaged or simply lost through natural competition.
Churchyards were different.
They remained relatively undisturbed.
A tree associated with a church community could be preserved for generation after generation.
Given the extraordinary lifespan of a yew, that protection matters.
An oak might grow, mature and disappear while the same yew continued standing beside a church for centuries.
Perhaps some of the ancient yews we see today survived not because they were originally sacred, but because they eventually occupied places where people chose not to cut them down.
Pagan or Christian?
After visiting these trees, I don’t think there is a single explanation.
Some yews may have existed before the churches beside them.
Some may have grown in places already significant to pre-Christian communities.
Others were almost certainly planted after Christianity was established, when the yew had already acquired powerful symbolism of death, resurrection and eternal life.
And some may simply have survived because churchyards protected them.
Those explanations can also overlap.
A naturally growing tree could become sacred to one community, survive a change of religion and later acquire an entirely different Christian meaning.
After a thousand years, separating those layers becomes extremely difficult.
Perhaps that uncertainty is what makes these trees so fascinating.
The trees that outlived the argument
Standing beside the struggling Ashdown Forest yew, the contrast with the great churchyard trees was striking.
It had survived without a medieval church beside it, but it had not enjoyed the same obvious protection or attention.
Meanwhile, across Sussex, enormous yews continue growing beside churches that have themselves been rebuilt, altered and restored many times.
We may never know whether the oldest of those trees began as pagan sacred trees, Christian symbols or simply survivors from an earlier landscape.
But they have remained while almost everything around them has changed.
Perhaps that is why successive generations have attached ideas of eternity to the yew.
Few living things make a thousand years of human history feel quite so short.
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Research and further reading
Much of the information on individual yew trees, including recorded girths, classifications and historical observations, was cross-checked against the Ancient Yew Group, whose database documents ancient and notable yews across Britain.
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