Ankerwycke Yew

Taxus baccata · Berkshire, England · TQ 001 727

Standing in a Thames meadow opposite Runnymede, the Ankerwycke Yew is the oldest tree in National Trust care. It is the traditional (if contested) witness of Magna Carta in 1215, and later of Henry VIII's courtship of Anne Boleyn. The priory walls beside it are a fragment of a 12th-century nunnery.

Even a cautious 1,500-year estimate means the yew was already old when the nuns arrived around 1160.