Ross-on-Wye

Trees or plants growing on churches is reasonably common but them growing naturally inside is a rare occurance with very few recorded occurances.

One occurance relates to St. Mary's church Ross-on-Wye where great elms were planted in rows enclosing the curchyard to make the yard a delightful retreat during the hot days of summer. These were supposedly planted by John Kyrle but this may have been done to add some additional romanticism to the tale and it is contested in some guidebooks³ of that period.

The story goes that one of the elms was "impiously" cut down by a certain rector because it excluded the light².

Trees in the church yard
[Thanks to Richard Mayo]
(Click for a larger image)

As a result of this, first recorded in around 1811, a pair of suckers from the trees penetrated the walls. These grew from the pew where John Kyrle used to sit in front of the north isle window and in the early 1880's these were around twenty feet high¹ and they were trimmed when they reached the roof².

The north isle window is east facing and thus it is slightly unusual that the trees should have flourished so well.

These suckers and their story were a major tourist attraction with many references to them in Ross and Wye Tour Guidebooks until by 1886 the suckers had died¹.