In the great mass of literature concerning Gilbert White, there is curiously little said about this village; yet it has one of the most interesting old churches in the county--the church in which White officiated for over a quarter of a century, during all the best years of his life, in fact; for when he resigned the curacy at Farringdon to take that of Selborne, for which he had waited so long, he was within two years of bidding a formal farewell to natural history, and within eight of his death. The church register from 1760 to 1785 is written in his clear, beautiful hand, and in the rectory garden there is a large Spanish chestnut-tree planted by him. Although not so fortunate in its surroundings as Selborne, with {198} its Lyth and flowery Bourne and wooded Hanger, Farringdon village, with its noble church and fine old farm-buildings and old cottages, is the better village of the two. At the side of the churchyard there is an old oast-house, now used as a barn, which for quaintness and beauty has hardly its match in England. The churchyard itself is a pretty, peaceful wilderness, deep in grass, with ivy and bramble hanging to the trees, and spreading over tombs and mounds. Long may it be kept sacred from the gardener, with his abhorred pruning-hook, his basket of geranium cuttings--inharmonious flower!--and his brushwood broom to make it all tidy. Finally, there is the wonderful old yew. [Sidenote: Farringdon yew] A great deal has been written first and last about the Selborne yew, which appears to rank as one of the half-dozen biggest yew trees in the country. Its age is doubtless very great, and may greatly exceed the "thousand years" usually given to a very large churchyard yew. The yews planted two hundred years ago by Gilbert White's grandfather in the parsonage garden close by, are but saplings in comparison. A black poplar would grow a bigger trunk in less than ten years. The Selborne yew was indeed one of the antiquities of the village when White described it a century and a quarter ago. It is, moreover, the best-grown, healthiest, and most vigorous-looking yew of its size in Britain. The Farringdon yew, the bigger tree, has a far more aged aspect--the appearance of a tree which has been decaying for an exceedingly long period. {199}