If millénaire d'Offranville

Offranville

The yew runs along the low wall of the old churchyard, beneath the twisted spire of the bell tower: seven metres forty in girth at chest height, some ten metres high, a trunk hooped with metal and the red fruits of a female tree. The naturalist Henri Gadeau de Kerville visited it on 25 March 1892, measured it at 6.45 m and wrote that he believed he could allow an age 'of about 900 to 1,100 years'; this is the only serious estimate, and it remains a calculation. The church of Saint-Ouen, built by the parishioners from 1517 to 1582 and crowned around 1570 with its twisted spire, replaces a 10th-century building of which the yew would be the last witness. Tradition, gathered from the elders, relates that justice was dispensed in the shade of its branches and that the judge handed the winner a small branch of the tree; it was also believed that a yew planted in a churchyard absorbed the miasmas of the graves and protected the village from calamities, plague first of all. Beliefs reported, not attested by deeds. The tree has suffered greatly: seriously damaged by a hurricane in 1876, partly destroyed by lightning in 1894, pruned and covered with a zinc plate, set on fire on the night of 4 December 1914 by children who had lit candles in its hollow trunk. It is alive; the commune has hooped it, and cuttings taken in 1994 produced the small yew planted on the lawn for the year 2000.

Wikipédia — Église Saint-Ouen d'Offranville ↗

Getting there : Offranville is some ten minutes south-west of Dieppe; the church and its enclosure are in the centre of the village, Rue Jehan-Véron, freely accessible. The old churchyard, turned into a lawn, can be visited at any hour; the church is open every day in the daytime. The small yew planted on the lawn is a cutting from the big one.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound