Appin House Farm, Argyll and Bute

Following the Jacobite uprising in 1745, the Stewarts of Appin lost their clan seat at Ballachulish House, Glencoe, where there is a yew probably contemporaneous with the clan seat being there in the 1600’s. In the early 1700’s Appin House was built by Robert Stewart 8th of Appin and in the garden is a female yew with startling morphology. Presumed to have once been a hedge or topiary leading to access through the surrounding wall, its canopy now spreads high over the wall and overhangs the path to the entrance. No planting records are available, and a girth measure is impossible, but size and appearance suggest around 250 years old. If so, could it be a cutting from Ballachulish planted here after 1745 at the new centre of the clan? DNA testing could answer this, and more research is clearly needed.