I’m spending a few work days in Devon with my friend Guy Shrubsole, and in a lull between meetings he suggests I walk to Dartington Hall, where there’s something in the churchyard he says I’ll like.
I arrive as the sky pinkens and jackdaws assemble to roost. There’s a sentinel by the gate – a prime yew, with a towering, pillar-like trunk whose verticality is emphasised by cords that run directly into its roots. The impression is of a giant hawser, drawn and woven from the ground by some skilled ropemaker. The trunk bears massive boughs that droop slowly towards the ground, and sportive younger branches erupting in untidy clusters.
There’s a satiny gleam on the upper leaves, but viewed from below, their myriad matt surfaces give the eye little to work on – photons that enter do not return. Under the canopy there’s a sense of quelling, not only of light, but of other energies. A stillness that, combined with knowledge of the longevity of yews, surely contributes to their veneration as axis mundi, connecting heaven and the underworld, and gatekeepers of eternity.
A second, much older yew stands among gravestones, as gnarled and burly as the other is straight. Its cords are varicose and carbuncled and the trunk is riven to its heart. But alongside these pronounced veteran features is new growth. A crack in a bough is packed with what looks in the gloom like moss, but it’s more yew – a dense tuffet of tiny twigs and foliage filling all available space. In the gaping hollow of the trunk, the wood is black with decay, and there’s a sinewy tangle – the internal continuation of a cluster of branches, penetrating inward like visceral roots. I have a strong, strong impression of this tree as multiple. Of all its ages compressed into one, autophagous, self‑colonising body where new growth consumes the old. A being that feeds on history, eats time.
I lean in to embrace its curves. My forehead rests in a slight concavity and there’s a surge in my chest. I could cry, but instead turn my head and lay a cheek on flaky bark. In my eyeline are a blackbird rummaging in leaf litter, and in boldly carved capitals, a single word at the top of a headstone: “Sacred”.
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