Ancient Yews celebrated in new book

Three ancient yews in a Northumberland churchyard, one of which is said to have protected St Cuthbert when he preached underneath it in the seventh century, have inspired a new book of writings and poetry by visually impaired people, titled Sacred Yew: the Ancient Roots of Beltingham. See below for extracts from four poems.

The preface was written by popular TV ecologist and botanist David Bellamy, who has been a great supporter of the sacred yew project.

“Beltingham is a magical place where you can step back into time as it was when people made lives and livelihoods within their own purlieu of land and landscape, thanks to a heritage of common sense, hard work and local community,” Mr Bellamy wrote.

Actor Robert Hardy, CBE, an expert on the history of the longbow, wrote the introduction to the book. As he explains, when Henry V was preparing for the Agincourt campaign he ordered his master bowyer, Nicholas Frost, to gather yew wood from all over the country to make war bows. But he forbade him to take yew from ecclesiastical land. “The tree at places of worship was still sacred.”

The Beltingham Yew project was initiated by the Hexham Club for Visually Impaired People, and conceived and written by Mandi Harris. The idea was that each club member would come and visit the tree, accompanied by a sighted partner or volunteer, and would then translate their sensory perceptions the tree into poetry or prose.

	The book is being sold for a suggested minimum donation of £5.00 plus £1.00 postage and packing, with every penny going to the Hexham Club for Visually Impaired People. Please contact Mandi Harris at mandiharris@uwclub.net.

At first the aim was simply to produce a small booklet for the partipants, but through the involvement of Volunteering Tynedale, the project grew. Children at the local Church of England primary school spent a day doing archery and learning about the church and its yew trees before writing their own poems back at school, some of which were published. The book grew, and so did the project.

Since yew wood was used in the north of England to dowse for hidden objects, the group held a dowsing workshop for the visually impaired group. “The dowsers passed on their skills to the whole group with much excitement and astonishment that they could find the course of a water pipe under the floor!” reported local PCC member Libby Scott, who wrote an article about the project for the Parish Pump magazine. Meanwhile there were other questions about the age and relationships of the trees (their DNA was sent to the University of Hamburg to test whether they are related to each other) and about the age of the church itself. As a result of the questions, the remains of an Anglo-Saxon church, possibly dating from the time of Cuthbert, are believed to have been located.

“The tree was incredibly inspiring and it was wonderful to see the effect it had on everybody” said participant Anne Leebrick. The book is being sold for a suggested minimum donation of £5.00 plus £1.00 postage and packing, with every penny going to the Hexham Club for Visually Impaired People. Please contact Mandi Harris at mandiharris@uwclub.net.

ARC has in the past been strongly involved in yew projects throughout the UK, including the Millennium Yew project, in which cuttings from trees that were alive during the time of Christ were distributed to thousands of churches around the country. We also supported in 2000 a programme to explore, through poetry and music, the 3,000 year old Ashbrittle yew in Somerset.