Nature features

The Ankerwycke Yew (c) Christopher Guise

The National Trust, one of Britain's biggest landowners, is carrying out a five-year audit of all the ancient trees in Britain on its properties. The results will be added to an online database of trees managed by the Woodland Trust.

According to the National Trust, these trees are in danger of dying out due to pollution, climate change and development.

One of the most high profile trees surveyed will be a 31-ft-wide yew found in the ruined priory of Ankerwycke in Berkshire, also known as the Magna Carta tree.

Although there is no record of the exact spot where the signing took place. The Magna Carta itself mentions “the meadow that is called Runnymede between Windsor and Staines”, and many are convinced that the great yew tree in Ankerwycke was the site where the oath-swearing took place.

A 1754 portrait of the signing of the Magna Carta

The Ankerwycke Convent was founded in about 1160, right next to the yew tree which has already been there for about 1,700 years.

Yew trees are often found close to religious buildings such as abbeys or churchyards. They were considered holy trees by the Celts, and had a deep association with runes, used by Anglo Saxons. In Saxon times nearby Runnymede was known as Rune-mede, a place of council where runes would have been consulted. Yew trees also symbolise death and resurrection in Christianity – due to their ability to sprout again and put on new growth.  

The signing of Magna Carta is sometimes described as the birth of democracy. The legal charter required King John of England to proclaim certain rights (pertaining to freemen), respect certain legal procedures, and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It explicitly protected certain rights of the King's subjects, whether free or fettered — and implicitly supported what became the writ of habeas corpus, allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment.

The Kennedys meet the Queen at Runnymede.

The Magna Carta influenced the development of the common law in the English-speaking world and many constitutional documents, including the United States Constitution.

The area's importance to the United States was marked by a memorial to John F Kennedy, unveiled in nearby Runnymede in 1965.

Brian Muelaner is the ancient tree officer for the National Trust.

He told BBC Berkshire's Henry Kelly about the National Trust's new five year project to count the numbers of ancient trees in Britain, which is being led by the Woodland Trust.

"An ancient tree is  that's exceptionally old for its species." he said. "Something that's quite short-lived like a birch tree would be an ancient tree at 200 years old, whereas a Yew would be 800 years old before it could be called ancient.

"I think ancient trees are fantastic visual entities in a landscape. They are exceedingly rich in biodiversity, and they give a person a perspective on time, they are indicators of past management of the landscape, they are often remnants of very very ancient landscapes."

Britain is particularly rich in ancient trees, and has 70 per cent of all ancient trees in Western Europe, partly because it was not invaded in the First or Second World Wars, and has less woodland.

"Britain's ancient trees are in churchyards, hedgerows and there are collections of them in ancient parklands." said Brian.

"You don't usually get ancient trees in a woodland, because its neighbours would overtop it with shade and just kill it. They are nearly always in parkland or on edges of woods or in hedgerows."