Kingley Vale Nature Reserve and the Kingley Vale yew trees (near Chichester) are well-signed from the West Stoke car park (What3Words: century.irritated.convert) and are well worth a visit. The trees are said to be some of the oldest living things in Britain and although official estimates put them at 500 years old, some estimate them to be much, much older, with some of them possibly 2,000 years old.
Legend and ghosts
Legend has it that there was a great battle between the locals and marauding Vikings in AD 859, and whilst the Viking kings were buried up on the hilltop nearby at the Devil’s Humps (also known as the Kings’ Graves), the soldiers fell, died and were buried in the forest below. Others say that the trees were planted in commemoration of the battle. Stories abound that the ghosts of the soldiers haunt the forest and that the yew trees come alive and turn into humans at night.
Walking in the Yew Forest
If you can, arrive early so that you can enjoy the forest alone. It’s 1.2 km to Kingley Vale from the West Stoke car park and then no more than 1.5 km to the end of the forest and back. There is little to no sound pollution here, and the path weaves its way through the trees. It’s easy to believe that these trees come alive. They are twisted and gnarled but have multiple arms and sinewy fingers stretching across the path and around each other. At times it feels like you’re in a cave, and then you feel like they’re grasping at you or beckoning you onwards with their many ancient tendrils.
This way and that, they clamber, and so do you, with just the sound of your footsteps, and the twitter of the occasional bird. At the end of the trail is the Grandfather Tree which has branches that have stretched down to the ground and rerooted, giving birth to dozens more trees.
Are the Kingley Vale yew trees spooky? A little, but not in a sinister way. In fact, more than anything, the forest is magical and quite unlike anywhere else that you’ll walk. When you emerge you feel almost cleansed but none of that quite explains the whispy and ethereal white mist that appeared in my photos, just after I entered the forest.
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