Ninfield

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The beautifully sculpted bole was hollowed out by local villagers in 1820. In the process they discovered a cannonball that was being engulfed by the tree. A hundred and twenty years later in the Second World War Canadian soldiers preparing for D day were stationed locally and the cannonball dissappeared. When the soldiers left and their camp was cleared the cannonball was found in a field and returned to the church authorities.

But how did the cannonball get inside the tree in the first place? It is known that the farm opposite the church was used as a defensive position during the Civil War by Royalists. The farm owners, the Angells were Caterers to the royal family at the time and Cromwell’s men would have fired cannon at these staunch Royalists, one iron ball must have gone astray and embedded itself in the tree.

After the tree was hollowed out a bench table and benches were installed so that a dozen people could sit inside. A door on hinges with a bolt was fixed to the main entrance at some stage and in fact the inside is quite spacious, 3 metres diameter at its longest. No one is sure what it was used for: it could have been a store room or a Victorian amusing curiosity. In the last century homeless people sometimes lived inside hollow yew trees with their whole family, the door may have been put up to stop this happening.

The tree has been visited by various experts over the years. The earliest expert record is from 1650 when John Aubrey measured the tree as 30ft 5 in. at 5 ft up (the same as a parish record of 1630). The Gardeners Chronicle of 1874 recorded 30ft 9in at the same height. When Allen Meredith went in 1984 he measured 31ft 6in. The tree has put on 13 inches (33cm) girth in 354 years; that’s less than one millimetre a year.

The detail in the bark and old wood is quite amazing. The lightly flaked bark is a beautiful mix of pinks and blues and the old white wood attracts the eye in a variety of places with its wonderful grooved textures, remnants of growth in earlier centuries.
 

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