The trees and the history of Gisborough Priory

With the sunlight flickering and filtering through the leaves, it is quite an exhilarating experience to stand, dwarfed, in the open ground beneath them.

But before you reach the lime cathedral (above) – known as the Monk’s Walk – you pass a dark, gnarled, mis-shapen yew (below). It is practically lost in the overgrowth and it doesn’t have a name, but it could, perhaps, maybe the region’s oldest tree.

Gisborough Priory – which is beside the town of Guisborough – was founded in 1119. In 1289, it was badly damaged by fire, but was rebuilt. It was during the 1290s that the splendid east window (below) was constructed.

The priory was ravaged by marauding Scots after they had beaten the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, but it recovered to become the fourth richest religious house in Yorkshire at the time of Henry VIII’s dissolution in 1539.

An artist's impression of the priory in its heyday, with the east window at the far end, and so out of sight

On Henry’s instruction, the priory was demolished, although the new owner of the site, Sir Thomas Chaloner, liked the east window enough to save it as a landscape feature. With the glass and stonework knocked out, it gave a splendid prospect over the family’s estate, and the family developed orchards, gardens, fishponds and a pigeonhouse in front of it.

In 1680, Sir Thomas’ great-grandson, William, built the Old Hall which faced into the town but with a back garden that looked over the priory grounds towards the east window.

In the decades that followed, the Chaloners invested heavily in creating formal gardens on the priory grounds. They raised some land beside the east window and planted lime trees on it in the shape of a diamond.

The plan of Gisbrough Priory and gardens of 1709. Top left is the ruined east window from the priory with the parish church beside it. Bottom right is the Old Hall, which the Chaloners built in 1680 but abandoned in the 1820s when it became too wet. Now the parish hall is on its site. The first sign of an avenue of limes can be seen in the top right where the Monk's Walk was planted in the 1720s

It was brilliantly done, so that the view from the Old Hall looked through the length of diamond while the widest points of the diamond were exactly aligned with the east window.

The first limes were planted in the 1720s, and they were all pollarded at above headheight. It was when this fashion finished in the mid 18th Century that they were allowed to grow heavenwards.

However, by then, the Chaloners had fallen on hard times. In the 1820s, they discovered that the Old Hall had been built on a spring and had become too damp for habitation so they moved to Long Hull, a farmhouse that they rebuilt as Gisborough Hall – the current hotel.

But then, in the sudden economic downturn of 1825, Robert Challoner – the former MP for Richmond and Lord Mayor of York – became bankrupt when his bank in York collapsed. He disappeared to Ireland and never returned to Guisborough.

In the 1850s, railways unlocked the ironstone mining potential of the Guisborough area and suddenly everything was rosy once more in the Challoners’ bank account. Robert’s son, Robert, returned to Guisborough Hall and began to restore the priory gardens.

It was he who worked on the Monk’s Walk, in-planting where trees had failed so that the cathedral was complete.

An Edwardian postcard of the Monk's Walk

All of the specimen trees in the gardens are marked on maps dating back to 1709, but it is only in 1854 that a patch appears on a plan where the scraggly old yew was growing. With its ancient limbs tumbling all over, some of them propped up to save them breaking, it clearly isn’t a specimen tree, but its multi-stemmed trunk shows that it is very old – it seems as if the map-makers, drawing the straight symmetry of their formal gardens, didn’t want acknowledge its gnarled presence until it became so old that it became noteworthy.

So how old might it be? Could it rival the Doe Park Oak, which has been growing on the cliffy bank of the River Balder near Cotherstone for about the last 800 years? Back in August we hailed as the oldest tree in the district – but could the Gisborough Yew steal its crown?

READ ABOUT THE DOE PARK OAK

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE DOE PARK OAK

“It is a mystery yet to be solved,” says Catherine Clarke, chair of the Gisborough Priory Project, which was formed in 2007 to take on the grounds. “It is large enough to suggest that it could have been there during the time of the priory, or it is possible that it could be prior to the priory, or it could be two trees that have grown together – there’s just no evidence.”

Since its formation, the Priory Project has done wonderful work in the serene grounds, clearing the land around the Monk’s Walk so that the limes come together like the roof of a nave above the visitor’s head, and treasuring the yew.

“I would like to think it was there during the times of the priory,” says Catherine, when pressed.

If it were just a sapling when Henry VIII’s men demolished the priory, it would be 500 years old – but it could, perhaps, maybe, go back nearer to when the priory was founded in 1119, or before, which would make it very old indeed.

But, like all venerable old ladies, it is not going to be so vulgar as to reveal the precise number of years that it has withstood everything that has been thrown at it.

THERE was an even more famous tree at Gisborough Priory (above in 1932): reputedly the first horse chestnut in England.

The horse chestnut is a native of the Balkans in eastern Europe and so it needed to be imported to Guisborough.

One version of the story says that the first Chaloner to own the priory’s ruins, Sir Thomas (1521-1565) was Elizabeth I’s ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire in 1558 – he was trying to arrange a marriage between the queen and the emperor’s son. While travelling in the distant lands, he spotted a conker and brought it home to the priory.

Sir Thomas Chaloner (1521-1565) who acquired the ruins of Gisborough Priory in 1547 and may perhaps have imported the first conker to Britain. Art historians read all sorts of things into this portrait - for example, he is snapping his fingers together in his lower hand to signify that life is short (he was only 44 when he died). Could that be a conker beside his fingers?

Another version of the story says that his stepson, also Sir Thomas (1563-1615), a chemist and a courtier, travelled to Italy to visit the pope’s alum works at Puteoli (now Pozzuoli in Naples). The pope wasn’t impressed by his presence – his holiness is said to have “anathematised” Sir Thomas – but the Englishman spotted a conker and brought it home. When planting it at Gisborough, he noticed the vegetation on the estate was surprisingly similar to that he’d seen on the pope’s slopes.

On investigation, he discovered alum-stone on Belman Bank, near Guisborough, and began mining – because he had such good contacts, in 1609, King James I banned imports of foreign alum to help make Guisborough profitable.

And a third version of the Gisborough Horse Chestnut says that it came from a conker that was captured aboard a ship of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

No one knows which of the stories is true.

Perhaps none of them, because tree historians say the first horse chestnut arrived from Turkey in 1616.

Anyway, when the horse chestnut was felled by a storm in 1971, The Northern Echo’s headline said: “Down comes a famous tree”. As we have learned to our cost in recent weeks, trees have claims to fame that are difficult to pin down, so it is dangerous to claim one as the first or the oldest, but the Gisborough Horse Chestnut was certainly famous.

We hailed the 14th Century dovecote at Gisbrough Priory to be the oldest still standing in this area - perhaps the yew tree could join it on our list of elderly relics

• With thanks to Pam Rayment, and to everyone who responded to our request for information about old trees.
•  Entrance to Gisborough Priory is free – it makes a lovely day out.

Bonkers about conkers

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• The first recorded game of conkers was played on the Isle of Wight in 1848
• Horse chestnuts get their name because they apparently have medicinal properties that cure a horse’s cough
• The Vikings used them as soap, and they have saponins in them that are today used in shampoo
• The Victorians ground them up and created conker flour. However, they are mildly poisonous
• There is a chemical in conkers – triterpenoid saponin – that may deter moths from inhabiting your wardrobe
• Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anything in them that kills spiders, no matter how many an old wife tells you to leave in the corners of your room