A 4,000-year-old tree thought to be Britain 's oldest living organism may be dying according to its custodian . The stunning Ashbrittle Yew , in the churchyard of the parish 's Church of St John the Baptist , in Somerset , has a girth of 38ft and an enormous vast canopy . Its central trunk is hollow with six smaller ones branching off - possible due to disease - and locals fear it is on its way out due to wilting branches and falling leaves . The 4,000-year-old tree is 'looking extremely sick , ' according to a warden at the church in Ashbrittle , Somerset . Churchwarden Charles Doble said : 'The tree is supposed to be the oldest living thing in England and was already fairly mature when Stonehenge was being built . 'Experts say it is 3,500 to 4,000 years old . 'But it 's looking extremely sick at the moment and I 'm worried whether the rural church or the yew will die first . ' But tree expert Dr Owen Johnson said the yew , in the village 10 miles west of Taunton , could just be going through a bad patch . He said : 'They go through spells where they might look as though they are not thriving , but a few years later they might look fine . ' The Ashbrittle Yew is the subject of myth and legend and people believe the mound it grows on is Bronze Age and that a pre-Roman chief is buried there . The world 's oldest tree lives on a mountain in central Sweden – and it is still growing . The 9,500-year-old Norwegian Spruce ( pictured right ) was discovered by scientists at Umeå University during a 2004 tree census in Fulufjällets National Park in Sweden . The age of the tree was established using carbon-14 dating at a laboratory in Miami , Florida after an investigation by the university . It has been able to survive so long thanks to the process of vegetative propagation , which means it is able to effectively clone itself . While the visible portion of the 13ft tall tree is relatively new , its root system has been growing for almost ten thousand years .
Experts say the Ashbrittle Yew was mature when it was planted . locals say it 's ' extremely sick ' due to wilting branches and falling leaves . But a tree keeper thinks it might just be going through a ' bad storm '