Byways in British Archaeology

One further problem remains to be noticed. Why is the yew, in a majority of instances, placed on the South side of the churchyard, or, failing the South, why on the West? For it is manifest to the careful observer that the North side is little favoured, and the East even less. In discussing the folk-lore of the cardinal points we saw that parishioners formerly shunned the North side of “God’s Acre,” and craved burial in the Southern or Western portions. The roots of this preference spread wide and deep, but even superficially there were reasons good enough. On the South side stood usually the churchyard cross (p. 328 supra). The main door and the entrance gate commonly faced the noonday sun. In Saxon times, when, as Dr Rock remarks, the simple building had often only one door, this door looked to the South[1082]. Clearly this quarter was popular. Originally, man would be guided in his selection by considerations of physical warmth; respect for solar influences on animated nature may have followed. Based on these feelings, ideas of sentiment, and later, of reverence, would be kindled in the minds of the worshippers.

For many years I have been collecting details concerning the position of yews in churchyards. Turning to the county of Surrey, I find well-grown yews tabulated for 41 churchyards—the list is not quite exhaustive. Of course, many churches lack the attendant yew. To simplify the question, we will imagine a median line passing East and West through the church, and prolonged through the churchyard. Trees standing South-East and South-West may for our present purpose be considered to be on the South side; the North-East and North-West corners are similarly reckoned as North. There remain the yews which occur roughly on the median line—East or West. On this basis, five Surrey yews were noted as being on the North side, and only six on the West. One only is recorded as standing due East. The remainder are situated due South or at intermediate positions in the sun’s track. Partial explanations may frequently be offered. In one case of a Western yew, there is a doorway at the West end only; in another, the tree is rather young, and is a doubtful claimant to be catalogued. Again, at Chipstead (Fig. 73, p. 379), a noble yew on the North overshadows a blocked-up Northern door of Transitional Norman date, so that formerly the villagers passed this tree as they entered the edifice. Still again, one North yew is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the Southern yard is a mere strip, though, to present the case fully, we must note that occasionally one finds a North yew where the Southern burial ground is spacious, and the Northern actually narrow and stinted.

In order to form a just opinion on the subject of the yew’s position, we ought to ascertain the earliest plan of the church and the original extent of the burial-ground. It would then, I think, be discovered that the space most used for interments, and the porch or door through which the worshippers generally entered the building, correspond, in the vast majority of cases, with the position of the sentinel yew. Which is cause, and which is effect, may be an open question. Did the yew obtain its place—generally, as we have seen, with the South aspect—because of the superstitious notions already given, and were the graves afterwards made in a cluster around it? Or did the accumulating burials on a particular side call forth a desire for a funereal emblem, a “warder of these buried bones,” as Tennyson sang? Again, did the yew precede the church, or the church the yew, or were they co-eval? Probably no single solution is the true one. Surveying the whole field, I think that the planting of the yew was generally an after-event, because a preference for interment on the sunny side goes back to pre-Christian times, and because the yew is not a universal feature in churchyards. In some few cases the building and the tree are apparently of equal age; in other instances, the church may have been built, one imagines, adjacent to an already existing tree.

The Surrey statistics are borne out by those of Hampshire. Out of twenty-one ancient yews which I have scheduled for that county, five only stand on the North side, two on the West, and one on the East. If a complete list were obtainable, it might tell a similar story. Here, as in dealing with Surrey, should two yews be present, the classification considers the older and more important tree; should there be more than two, the positions of the majority of old trees are taken. It frequently happens that there are several young trees, in those cases what may be called a “foundation yew” often dominates the graveyard. Two Easterly yews and one Northerly are alone recorded for those positions in Middlesex; two Northerly for Berkshire, and similarly for other counties, though in no county is the list at all complete. Again, out of nineteen Normandy villages with churchyard yews, the figures were: thirteen yews on the South, five West, one North, and none East. Hence, the preference is French as well as British. In districts where chalk and limestone are absent, the yew is comparatively scarce. On the Boulder Clay of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and, in fact, over the North of England as a whole, the ash, elm, and horse chestnut are the most usual trees. Frequently they are supplemented by a few pyramidal Irish yews of no great age.

A rapid co-ordination of details may now be given. The yew appears to have been held in superstitious respect during the Bronze Age[1083], and it is possible, in the preceding Neolithic period. The Romans and Greeks favoured the tree for its funereal symbolism. The earliest Christians in Britain seem to have adopted the yew as a sacred emblem, occasionally, perhaps, building their churches by its side; and, reverencing it because of its hallowed associations, they employed it for certain gloomy ceremonies. Early Mediaeval symbolists saw in the tree a type alike of death and of resurrection, and the yew actually obtained a position in ritual, and prestige in the Church Calendar. Much later, it crept into the Christmas decorations. Meanwhile, in harmony with the Mediaeval practice of combining the secular and religious life of the community, the yew seems to have been in some instances a trysting-place for open-air assemblies. It sheltered the church fabric from storms, and, at a time when “England was but a fling, But for the eugh and the grey goose wing,” it lent its aid in protecting the country itself. The “sad, unsociable plant” most likely increased numerically—in churchyards, in avenues, and on upland wastes where it had flourished in Pleistocene times but had afterwards disappeared.

History tells little of all these incidents, but in the minds of most men, ignorant or learned, there is an instinctive feeling, not dissonant with reasonable probability, that this mysterious, old-world tree derives its dignity and expressiveness from the customs of ages exceedingly remote. Well might Mr William Watson, sitting—not indeed, under some aged tree in a sequestered graveyard, but beneath the shade of the monarch yew near Newlands Corner, in Surrey—sing of the exceeding longevity of these sentinels, which guard their secrets with such jealousy: