The dragon that became a hill

A dead dragon under the grass, and a knight's bow grown into a yew.

Bolton's Bench is a small hill at the edge of Lyndhurst topped by a single famous yew. Its name honours an 18th-century Duke of Bolton, a Master Keeper of the forest. In the Bisterne Dragon legend, the dying beast reached this spot and became the hill itself. Sir Maurice Berkeley later died here as well, and his yew bow, it is said, took root and became the tree on the summit. In 2024 a sapling from the Sycamore Gap tree was planted opposite it, as the New Forest National Park put it, opposite its most famous tree.