Visit to Yew forest, Sussex

[Englishbowman]

Seeing as longbows were often made from yew I though people might be interested in my recent visit to Kingley vale in Sussex. It is an ancient yew forest that dates back past medieval times and has many trees over 3000 years old, it reminded me of something from the lord of the rings, it was like walking through the old forest!
 

one of the many yew groves

a big tree

warch out for goblins!

[YewArcher]

And there you see.....why its so darn expoence and hard to get a nice yew stave! If you can find it you cant cut it and even if you could finidng a 75"-80" straight clean stave is a challange!

Nice looking forest.

SJM

[koan]

Awesome pics!!...Brian

[cowboy]

Those trees look like they could come alive and talk to ya - or grab ya . Weird lookin....

[Holzwurm]

And there you see.....why its so darn expoence and hard to get a nice yew stave! If you can find it you cant cut it and even if you could finidng a 75"-80" straight clean stave is a challange!

Nice looking forest.

SJM

Thats a Beautiful forrest, thank you very much for that photo. I miss that about England very much (I am English I just Immigrated to Canada). You'll find that alot of Yew forrests in England now are protected Regionally. I'm not too sure about Sussex but I know that's how it was where I used to live. I used to have a reasonably sized Yew tree in my garden, however I did not cut it down for staves just because it was indeed a Gorgeous tree that I would miss very much - not to mention it was the only one on the whole property. If you are really desperate for a Yew stave, I've found the best place to look is ebay. You'd be surprised at the selection of staves that people have on their and the cheap price. A good Yew stave will probally fetch you around 50$ US.