Kingley Vale, West Sussex: The ancient, twisted yews that are the oldest living things in Britain

Today's Secret Britain spot is a mysterious and magical spot in West Sussex.

The ancient yew trees in Kingley Vale.
The ancient yew trees in Kingley Vale.
(Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

This must be where the Ents live, where dryads play and fairies sleep under toadstools — yet it is only three miles from the coastal city of Chichester.

A walk through these ancient, twisted yews, which are among the oldest living things in Britain with trunk girths of up to 16ft, is an enchanting rarity.

Kingley Vale country park on the Sussex Downs.

Follow the nature trail through this 500-acre SSSI and enjoy spectacular views of the English Channel and South Downs. Within the nature reserve are 14 scheduled monuments, including the Iron Age Devil’s Humps (barrows) and Goosehill Camp, plus green woodpeckers, red kites and chalkhill blue, holly blue and brimstone butterflies.

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Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.