The trial for two men accused of felling the celebrated Sycamore Gap tree in the north of England opened on Tuesday. The tree, a beloved landmark that stood by Hadrian’s Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was found illegally cut down in September 2023.
Two men — Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, both from Cumbria, England — have pleaded not guilty to two charges of criminal damage. On Tuesday, they appeared in Newcastle Crown Court, in England’s northeast, less than an hour’s drive away from where the tree stump stands.
Presenting the case against the defendants on Tuesday morning, the prosecutor, Richard Wright, called the felling a “moronic mission” and an “act of deliberate and mindless criminal damage.”
He told jurors that Mr. Graham and Mr. Carruthers had driven to the site from the nearby city of Carlisle late on Sept. 27, 2023, to deliberately chop down the tree.
Mr. Wright said that the tree had been cut down with a chain saw in minutes, using methods that indicated specialist knowledge of felling, and that the act had been filmed on Mr. Graham’s phone.
The prosecutor told the court that a wedge cut out from the tree had later been photographed next to a chain saw in the trunk of Mr. Graham’s Range Rover. “This was perhaps a trophy taken from the scene to remind them of their actions,” Mr. Wright said, “actions that they appear to have been reveling in.”
Prosecutors said that evidence gathered from the defendants’ phones suggested that they had shared social media posts and international news reports after the felled tree was discovered.
The prosecution said that Mr. Graham, who owns a construction company, and Mr. Carruthers, who worked in property maintenance and mechanics, were friends and had felled another large tree together a month earlier.
They both deny felling the tree and have pleaded not guilty. The charges of criminal damage that they face relate to the tree and to the part of Hadrian’s Wall — the Roman fortification stretching 70 miles across northern England — that it fell on.
The trial is expected to continue for two weeks. When the men were charged in April 2024, the senior officer in the case, Detective Chief Inspector Rebecca Fenney, asked members of the public not to speculate online about the crime or the accused.
“We recognize the strength of feeling in the local community and further afield the felling has caused,” she said in a statement. “However, we would remind people to avoid speculation, including online, which could impact the ongoing case.”
Many had mourned the destruction of the tree, an icon that stood on Hadrian’s Wall, which the occupying Roman army built in the second century.
The tree had long been a way marker and memory maker: a site of wedding proposals and remembrance ceremonies, a sentry in photos from one-in-a-lifetime family vacations, taped to fridges across the world. It also appeared in the 1991 film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.”
It was almost 200 years old when it was illegally cut down.
In August, rangers spotted a few sprouts near its base, an unexpected sign of new life, and seeds and genetic material that scientists gathered from it last year have also started to grow. The National Trust intends to give out 49 saplings next year to spread the tree’s legacy.
That number is intentional, according to Andrew Poad, the general manager of Hadrian’s Wall, which is partly managed by the National Trust. The tree was 49 feet tall when it was felled. And the saplings will be about a foot tall when they are given to their recipients.
Amelia Nierenberg is a breaking news reporter for The Times in London, covering international news.
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