Ancient Suffolk. Yews and Puddingstones.

I love old things . My house was build up in 1500 , that was before Henry eight came to the throne and started chopping off his wives ’ heads He was only nine at the time . But there are older buildings in Suffolk . The pretty little Norman church at Wissington was build up in the 12th century . When the fleece business deal enriched this part of Suffolk in the 15th one C many of the churches were elaborate and embellished but this picayune church in the middle of nowhere was overlooked .

The carved tympanum over the south door is beautiful and date from the former 12th century .

The church even managed to be overlooked by ‘ Smasher ’ Dowsing , the enthusiastic Puritan iconoclast who was responsible for much of the end of moving-picture show and Catholic imaging in East Anglia during the reformation . There are 12th century wall picture , including one of the other depictions of St. Francis of Assisi in England and an early 15th century picture of the dragon which was tell to have come along from the River Stour in 1405 and terrify the topical anesthetic .

In these days there appeared lately an evil dragon of excessive duration with a huge dead body , crest promontory , saw - similar tooth and elongate tail in land near the town of Bures near Sudbury , which destroyed and killed a herd of sheep . The servant of Sir Richard Waldegrave who owns the commonwealth haunted by the dragon total forth to shoot it with arrows which sprang back from its ribs as if they were metal of punishing stone and from the spines if its back with a jangling as if they were hit bronze plates , and flew far away because its skin was impenetrable . Almost the whole county was summoned to mow down it but when it saw that it was to be shot at again , it fled into the marsh , hid in the Reed and was run into no more . ’

It was a joy to find this little clump ofGalanthus elwesiinestling in the God’s acre when I went to shoot it this afternoon on a bitterly cold January twenty-four hour period .

But old than any building , yew have always been part of the British landscape painting . They are one of only three native coniferous tree . Fossil remains show thatTaxus baccatais at least 15 million years old . But many subsist yews are an unbelievable years . They were venerate by Druids and many of them were institute on sanctified website which Christians then took over . Longbows made of yew were used by English archers at the Battle of Agincourt . In 1911 , a yew spear tip was base in Clacton , Essex . It is 420,000 years older and the older wooden artifact ever establish . Yew tree molder within with age so you ca n’t count ringing to tell their age , instead you have to measure their girth . There are yew in the UK which are over 1000 years old , they are the oldest inhabit organism in Europe . They constantly regenerate by steady down from their branch tips when they touch the earth and also tooth root grow through the hollow meat .

Suffolk does n’t have the ideal conditions for yew but nevertheless we have one or two old ones . This beautiful tree is in the churchyard of Preston St. Mary quite nigh to where I dwell . It is 800 years erstwhile and predates the fourteenth church service by a recollective clip so presumably this was always a consecrated land site . I regain it sobering to look at a live Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree like this one and imagine that it was there when Genghis Kahn and his Mongol hordes were sweeping across Eurasia and crusaders were on the rampage vote down the pathetic Cathars in south west France and attacking moslems in Jersualem .

Irish yew known asTaxus baccata ‘ Fastigata ’ is an just physique . Irish yews are not ancient at all . Every one dates back to a mutant form ofTaxus baccatafound in County Fermanagh in 1780 . I had one in the middle of my lawn which had to go , as it nonplus out like a mad thumb and anyway it have in the way of the croquet .

But even older than the oldest yew tree are the amazing puddingstones which are several million years old and the world ’s rare rocks . They are a conglomerate stone which is a variety of mostly granitic pebbles which started off sundry with clay in a river bed . They became bonded together when they were compressed and wander around by glaciers in the Ice Age . They have the appearance of plum tree puddings because of all the pebbles rebound up in what look like rough cementum . When the Ice Age end they tumbled into river and were spread out round the countryside . Here in Suffolk which is a stoneless countryside aside from Flint River , they were thought to be witching Lucy Stone . They were often used in the foundations of churches or as markers at hamlet or fords . There is one in the beautiful hamlet of Kersey which intimately got destroy a few years ago .

worker from Suffolk Highways section were just about to start assault it with pickax when a local man spotted them and it was saved . It has pose there since the Pleistocene Age rile nobody and it ’s not until the 21st century that it ’s suddenly considered to be a ‘ tripping chance ’ .

I am not surprised that stones have been venerated . I am sure I ’m not the only one who loves them and carries Isidor Feinstein Stone back in their pocket from wherever they travel to . I grew up in the Peak District of Derbyshire and miss having rocks to clamber on here . In my former garden I had a massive rock install with great difficultness and planted birch trees in a circle fill out it . I used to wash the birch trees every class so they were gleaming blank ; they could do with a airstream now . I moved off 16 year ago and I have since heard that local small talk has it that I was a Druid . I do n’t know if they thought I sacrificed goats and cockerels or what . Actually nobody knows exactly what Druids did or believe as they left no written records . Anyway , I am not a Druid ; I am just someone who sleep together ancient buildings , rock and tree . And that is why I decided to write this office .

39 Responses toAncient Suffolk. Yews and Puddingstones.

This post bid up a few chuckles half the world aside so mayhap you are a Druid ! Was that impression by your former neighbor based on the initiation of your birch tree Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree circle stress by a healthy stone , or was there other “ evidence ” ? possess a theatre dating back to 1500 is inconceivable to me . That ’s a good century before the first English colony was settled in North America in 1607 . My own menage was built in 1951 , which build it “ honest-to-goodness ” by local standards . Old churches are also relatively uncommon here – the first military mission church in California ( south of us in San Diego ) was build in 1769.California does maybe have the UK beat on sometime trees , though , with a Sequoia called “ The President ” estimated at 3200 age old . Whether it an the other ancient Sequoias will survive another 100 class , much less longer , is a concern , especially after “ The General ” , over 2200 class old came close to proceed up in flames during one of last class ’s severe wildfires .

entrancing stories . So revel finding out about the yews and pudding stones . Thanks for thatVeronica

I love older thing , too . Wow–1500 ! That was just one of the amazing thing we experienced during our duet of trips to Europe … the history , the beauty , the old things . Thanks for sharing the stories . 🙂

Delightful . give thanks you !

Ancient Suffolk. Yews and Puddingstones.