Gary Pickles will never forget the morning of 28th September 2023. A call had come in to his ranger’s office from a local farmer, who reported that the Sycamore Gap tree appeared to be down.

Pickles didn’t think it was a prank; that’s not really the Northumberland farmers’ way. A storm had raged throughout the previous night, battering the wild expanse of northern England in which the 55-year-old had worked, on and off, for 25 years. But it didn’t quite make sense. The tree – solitary, sturdy, sheltered in a dell alongside Hadrian’s Wall – had withstood far greater tempests over the past century and a half as it had branched into popular culture and extended roots deep into the country’s affections.

Pickles grabbed the keys to his Northumberland National Park 4×4 and drove from his home in Haydon Bridge, less than ten miles from the famous landmark. Part of the sycamore’s allure had always been the purity of its sightline from Military Road, which runs parallel with the wall a few hundred yards south: the way the ridge dips into a perfect U-shape, with the ancient Roman stones framing the tree and the land falling away to the north to create an arresting silhouette.

“As I got nearer and nearer I did a quick double take and I just knew,” he says. The veteran ranger instantly recognised foul play. “The tree had gone [fallen] north. If it was going to fall over, it would have fallen south,” he says, “as the roots can’t penetrate to the north because of the wall so there’s less anchorage.” He could also just about make out an oval of light-coloured wood at the base, which stood out against the grey of the autumnal morning, the telltale sign of a fresh felling. “I realised immediately that this was going to be a huge story, that things were going to kick off,” he says. “I felt a sense of dread that I’d be the one having to share the news.”

From the roadside, Pickles made a series of calls to national park contacts. But he told them to hang on before releasing the story; he needed to be sure. Driving up to the Steel Rigg car park, around a mile west of the tree, he jogged his way back along the Hadrian’s Wall Trail that he’d spent years maintaining. Approaching from this direction, the steeply undulating topography masks the tree until you’re almost upon it. The sight that greeted him as he arrived offered a terrible clarity: the stately tree – perhaps the most photographed in the UK – lay prone and askew below, the base of its severed trunk resting on the edge of the now-damaged wall. Two hikers were there already. One of them was sobbing.

Pickles shakes his head at the memory. He’s sitting in the cafe of The Sill: National Landscape Discovery Centre, a little over a mile from what is now a horribly literal Sycamore Gap. It’s late July 2025, nearly two years after the felling. But the events of that morning remain vivid. He thinks of the tree, he says, every day.

The Sycamore Gap tree lies on the ground leaving behind only a stump. The tree was felled in the early morning of 28th September 2023

Through the café’s generous windows some of the ranger’s extraordinarily picturesque office is visible: a gently sloping grassed ridge, like the back of an enormous breaker advancing towards the shore of Scotland, its crest rising and falling in a series of steep perpendicular waves. Grafted on to this, often at crazy inclines, runs Hadrian’s Wall. Those Romans seldom took the easy route.

If the felling itself was startling, the response to it was even more so. It was around 9am when Pickles found the tree. By 10am, local media were reporting on its loss and, according to a witness statement presented in the ensuing trial at Newcastle crown court, National Trust staff members were weeping openly in the central office. National news outlets jumped on the story. By midday, with social media fanning the flames, it had gone global. “My brother in America rang me up that evening. Then my sister in France. It became international amazingly quickly,” recalls Pickles.

My brother in America rang me up that evening. Then my sister in France. It became international amazingly quickly”

The outpouring of shock and grief was profound. The National Trust, which had owned the tree since the 1940s, described the incident as “beyond comprehension”. Flowers and painted stones were left at the site over the ensuing days. People shared stories of engagements beneath its bows, of ashes scattered amid its well-established roots and annual pilgrimages to the site. Photographers and filmmakers were among those who lamented its destruction. Director Kevin Reynolds, who brought the tree to a global audience by featuring it in his 1992 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and often spoke of the site’s almost spiritual aura, said he’d been completely dismayed by the news.

Yet from the start the reaction had an overt anthropomorphism that made some uncomfortable. Some likened the tree’s demise to the death of a public figure or a close family member. Court hearings would go on to attract the sort of media presence and high-ranking judicial figures more commonly associated with a murder trial.

Perpetuating this theme, a six foot section of the trunk now forms the centrepiece of a permanent installation at The Sill, as if lying in state. Created by artist Charlie Whinney, it’s inscribed with heartfelt messages from the public and surrounded by three oak benches for quiet reflection. I visit the piece with Pickles. We walk around it in silence, joining a woman and her elderly parents doing likewise. “I read that you’re supposed to hug it,” I hear one of them say. They settle for sombrely placing their palms on the bark.

Immediately next door to The Sill is the Twice Brewed Inn. A representation of the tree in its full broccolied summer-leaf splendour forms the pub’s logo. Like a number of businesses in the Northumberland National Park, which has a lower population density than Mongolia, it has embraced stargazing, with themed nights and its own planetarium. The landlord is Steve Blair. He’s worked at the pub in various capacities since 2003. He has a shaved head and muscular, heavily tattooed arms. If he wasn’t a landlord he’d make an excellent bouncer. When he speaks, it’s in a quiet, considered tone.

“I remember driving past and seeing the tree for the first time many years ago and just going ‘Oh my god’,” he says. “Like many people around here, we had such a connection with it. I recall taking my wife for a walk to the tree when she was pregnant with our first child.” His eldest, he says, is now 25.

In the tumultuous days following the felling, Blair offered a £1,000 reward in the form of a bar tab – boosted to £1,500 by donations from two other local businesses – to anyone with information that led to a conviction. What he wanted – what everyone in this sparsely populated yet tight-knit community wanted, as sadness and bewilderment morphed into a gathering fury – was the answer to one simple question: who on earth would do such a thing?

Northumberland National Park ranger Gary Pickles stands in front of a six-foot section of the Sycamore Gap tree trunk at The Sill: National Landscape Discovery Centre

Whatever the opposite of a perfect crime is, that’s what Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, committed in the early hours of 28th September 2023. The venerable sycamore didn’t fall on them, but in every other respect they would find themselves pinned to the ground by their mendacity and criminal ineptitude.

Graham’s black Range Rover was clocked by numberplate recognition cameras heading towards Sycamore Gap from Carlisle, near where they both lived, and then back again between 11pm and 2am that night. His phone contained a video taken at Sycamore Gap at 12.32am. It shows the unmistakable silhouette of the famous tree, viewed from its celebrated southern aspect, and a figure stooped at its base. There’s the revving of a chainsaw, the pitch deepening as it bites into the trunk, then, at length, a cracking and a crash as it falls. The video, released publicly, has the grotesque allure of CCTV footage of street violence; you half want to look away. When the jury at Newcastle crown court was shown it during the trial that followed, the judge immediately ordered a 15-minute break.

A photo of a chainsaw and a disc of wood – the wedge that would have been cut away to guide the direction of fall – in the boot of Graham’s Range Rover offered further incrimination, as did phone messages exchanged between the men in the days that followed. “Jeffrey, it’s on fucking Sky News as we speak,” Graham said in one, using his nickname for Carruthers. In another exchange, the pair mocked a message by one of the many thousands of people who took to social media to express their revulsion at the destruction of a defenceless tree – and the manifest lack of backbone of those who did it. “Weak… fucking weak? Does he realise how heavy shit is?” asked Graham. Carruthers responded that he would like to see the commenter “launch an operation like we did last night. I don’t think he’s got the minerals”.

It was argued in court that Carruthers meant to say “…like he did last night…” It didn’t make sense; little of the men’s defence did. One thing was clear, however: in their failure to confess, and the way they reverted to blaming one another, anything but “minerals” was on display.

Blair, the landlord, recalls a time of fevered speculation and suspicion locally in the weeks that followed the felling, one which threatened at times to spill over into vigilantism. “A pitchfork mentality took hold,” he says. “There were people naming local people just because they had a chainsaw. Every farmer round here has a chainsaw, loads of people work in the woods. There are loads of people who are capable of doing it – it doesn’t mean they did it.”

“A pitchfork mentality took hold. There were people naming local people just because they had a chainsaw”

A 16-year-old boy and then a local man in his 60s were arrested. They were both later told they’d face no further action, but not before both were named online and in the tabloids. The unrelated pair were trolled viciously online and ostracised locally. “The pair of them couldn’t leave their houses,” recalls Blair.

That Graham, particularly, appeared to “savour” the potential miscarriages of justice was an aggravating factor in the men’s sentencing on 15th July 2025, increasing the length of their prison term. Making no distinction between the younger man who felled the tree and the older one who filmed it and drove them to and from the scene, Mrs Justice Lambert handed down a sentence of four years and three months to both.

The monetary value of the tree, disputed throughout the trial and sentencing, had been estimated in excess of £620,000. But it was its status as a symbol, and the deep affection in which so many held it, that the judge focused upon in her sentencing remarks. “For those who live in Northumberland or love this county, the tree had become a landmark: a symbol of the beauty of its untamed landscape, featuring prominently in local art, and local tourism,” she said. “But the public reaction has extended far beyond those who had visited the tree or for whom it had a personal resonance.” The length of the prison term and the tone of the remarks were welcomed by many. Others were left to ponder whether the duo’s sentence reflected the severity of the crime – or the magnitude of the reaction.

From The Sill I drive west towards Carlisle, following the route the men would have taken as they returned home from the scene of their covert “operation”. It was a journey of a little under an hour through the still-raging Storm Agnes – Graham driving, Carruthers filling the time by messaging his partner, the mother of his newborn daughter. When she sent him a video of their baby being bottle-fed, he responded: “I’ve got a better video than that”, before sharing Graham’s footage of the felling.

The men live in two villages, around a 15-minute drive apart. I visit Kirkandrews-on-Eden first, three miles northwest of Carlisle. It sounds idyllic and on a sunny summer’s afternoon it lives up to the billing. Fields of horses line the narrow lanes. Behind the timber-clad parish hall, the land slopes away to the broad, glistening waters of the River Eden, snaking towards the Solway Firth.

Graham’s property, if it can be called that, sits on the edge of a beck on the southwest approaches to the village. A “strange little shanty” was how this makeshift cluster of structures – a caravan, a barn, a few sheds – was described in reports during the trial. From here, he ran his company, DM Graham Groundworks, which included tree-felling services. A few of his vehicles are visible. Imposing iron gates guard the property from the roadside. They’re bookended by large ornamental flower pots decorated with scenes of cherubs, and monogrammed with giant initials: “DMG”. It’s William Randolph Hearst meets Poundland.

Few in the village knew Graham as much of a presence, or even a presence at all. “I did hear he was there [on the edge of the village] but only because someone I know is in the police,” one tells me. “I only became aware that he was here as a result of the felling.” What does he make of what happened, and the punishment, I ask? “It was a stupid thing to do, for sure. Why would you do that? But equally, it’s a… tree. I’ve got a few around here,” he says, gesturing towards the edge of his property, “that I wouldn’t mind him cutting down.”

“You’ll have a long wait on your hands,” chips in his neighbour, with a chuckle. Maybe not as long as he thinks. The judge ordered the pair to serve 40 percent of their sentence in prison, the rest on licence in the community. Given that Graham has been held since December last year, and that time counts towards his sentence, he will be out by next autumn.

Why did two grown men, in the words of one social media user, ‘drive for an hour through a storm just to make the world an uglier place?’”

The village of Kirkbride is larger than Kirkandrews. There’s a little school, a post office that sits behind grey metal shutters, and an old phone box converted into a micro-library. The southern edge of the village is dominated by a former RAF airfield, where rusting hangars and crumbling runways are threaded together by rutted, puddled tracks. Down one of these, by the old fuel depot, Carruthers lives with his partner and their two children in a caravan.

Much of the work he did was as a mechanic. It was how he met and became close with Graham, after the older man asked him to fix his dad’s Land Rover Defender in 2021. Graham’s dad hanged himself in June of that year, before the repairs were finished. Carruthers worked through the night to complete the job in time for the funeral, and the men, in Graham’s words, became “best pals”.

One villager I speak to says that Carruthers is an exceptional mechanic. The man asks not to be named but it’s clear he knows Carruthers well, calling him “Adam” throughout and speaking with a warm avuncularity. “It’s amazing what he can do with vehicles,” he says. He tells me a tale of someone calling up from abroad with a broken engine in a rare vehicle and Carruthers diagnosing and fixing the problem remotely.

At the time of his arrest following a tip-off to police, Carruthers was working in a workshop north of the village. He continued to work there after he was charged and until he was convicted on 9th May, all the time maintaining his innocence. He was a trusted employee, and while Graham had convictions for violence, including battery and public order offences, Carruthers had a clean record. The villager paints a picture of a strikingly bright, capable but highly restless individual. “Lord knows what he’d have been like at school,” he says.

When I ask whether he feels the sentence fits the crime, he all but snorts. “Absolutely not. That sentence was about the politics rather than the person.”

Daniel Graham leaves after attending the Sycamore Gap tree felling pre-trial at Newcastle crown court on 27th August 2024, where he was accused of causing £622,191 damage to the iconic tree

Hopes that the trial and sentencing of the Sycamore Gap Two might bring a modicum of closure to the Northumberland area and beyond have largely failed to materialise. For many I speak to, the unanswered question simply looms too large: why? Why did two grown men, in the words of one social media user, “drive for an hour through a storm just to make the world an uglier place?”

Plenty of hypotheses have been mooted: a vendetta against authority by Graham following the rejection of a planning application for his makeshift homestead. Carruthers’ “fascination” with the tree and penchant for damaging property to mark significant personal events (a theory suggested by Graham, whose strategy during criminal proceedings, the judge noted, was “to heap as much blame as possible on your co-defendant”).

Drunkenness was suggested by Carruthers at the eleventh hour, and swiftly rejected by Mrs Justice Lambert, given the skill of the felling. Others postulated that the performative culture and shock hyperinflation of the social media age might have been behind the act. It’s hard to imagine Graham and Carruthers would have been stupid enough to post their grainy souvenir video of the felling publicly. But it took Carruthers barely an hour to share the footage with his partner.

In the absence of a clear explanation, commentators and public forums have attributed the act to a societal malaise. This is an amorality tale for our times, they argue – a metaphor for Britain’s collective self-harm in recent decades or for global ecological vandalism. In truth, as unsatisfying as it may be, Britain’s most famous tree was likely brought down by something far more prosaic – a word those who attended the trial heard over and over again: mindlessness.

It’s something Martina Irwin, who set up the Tree Sanctuary in Coventry, knows a fair bit about. Her initiative was created in response to the casual and incessant vandalism of trees in the West Midlands city, usually ones planted by the local council. The work of Irwin and her fellow volunteers was recognised when they were chosen as a recipient of one of the National Trust’s Trees of Hope – 49 saplings, each representing a foot in height of the Sycamore Gap tree at the time of its felling, harvested from the tree’s stump and presented to deserving charities around the UK.

“We deal with mindless vandalism of trees on a day-to-day basis,” Irwin tells me. “Vandalism comes in many shapes and forms and trees are an easy target.” I ask whether there’s a pattern here – whether the Sycamore Gap felling was in some way illustrative of a wider, bleaker trend.

“I don’t think we’ve got a population who are going around wanting to take out iconic mature trees,” she responds. “We do have people, ordinary people, who do wrong things, but we also have many, many more, thankfully, who do right things.” She doesn’t want to “get political”, she adds. But if there’s a pattern of careless, casual and systematic destruction of trees in Britain then it’s on a national and local government scale. “The amount of tree loss that we have for enabling housing developments or infrastructure projects really is catastrophic.”

Dr Philip Stone of the University of Lancashire is the UK’s foremost expert in so-called “dark tourism” – travelling to places which have become famous because of tragic or disastrous events – and grew up in Newcastle, around 35 miles east of Sycamore Gap. His master’s degree was in perceptions of landscapes. It’s a topic, he believes, that lies at the heart not just of the felling but also the reaction to it. “The issue that wasn’t [much] raised in the press coverage was one of class,” he says. “How different classes, whether you subscribe to such a system or not, view and value the landscape. What wasn’t mentioned at all was the idea that these were a couple of working-class lads who had no empathy for the landscape.” He adds: “There’s a kind of divide here, between the middle-class, romanticised perspective of what the countryside should look like, and what you might call ‘rural rationality’: the countryside as a place of farming, rural businesses, the military and other endeavours.”

In the trial, the judge called the landscape of Northumberland National Park “untamed”. Stone says it’s anything but. The Sycamore Gap tree was planted on that very spot, likely by Newcastle city clerk John Clayton in the 1810s, precisely because of its aesthetic potential, with other shoots cut back to preserve its picturesque isolation. The 250 square mile Kielder Forest, a short drive north, is the largest manmade woodland in England. Even sections of Hadrian’s Wall, which flows through the landscape, have been excavated, rebuilt and strengthened. “We have this romantic, chocolate-box idea of landscape and it’s very much a man-made construct,” says Stone. “It was a beautiful tree, don’t get me wrong. But even the judge fell into the ‘rural idyll’ trap.”

Among those who recoil at the perceived mawkishness of the fallout, hypocrisy is often cited. The same people who might have travelled several hours to visit Sycamore Gap and revel in its pristine beauty may have thought little of clearing a mature tree from their property to boost light or enable development.

“No developer or landowner has ever gone to prison for cutting down beloved and listed trees,” read one letter in the Guardian after the sentencing. “At best, they get a slap on the wrist or a paltry fine far less than the profit made. If you want to chop down a wonderful tree and get away with it, be moneyed and middle class. This seems to be the law at its most classist.”

Dame Judy Dench holds a seedling from the felled Sycamore Gap tree with a school student at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London on 20th May 2024

It’s late afternoon when I drive back to The Sill. From my room in the adjacent hostel I can see the ridge line and a faint trace of the wall flowing east towards the gap. I pull on my boots, cross Military Road and hike up the lane to Steel Rigg, then on to the path towards it. I’m not sure what I’ll find, or what my reaction will be. I have no direct connection to the tree; I stopped there once as a youngster, when hiking the Pennine Way, which briefly converges with the Hadrian’s Wall Trail. Like many in the UK, my familiarity with it was largely pictorial.

The sun is out, glancing off the north-facing scarp of the Whin Sill and causing the waters of the glacial Crag Lough, just beyond the gap, to sparkle. I follow the well-maintained path as it rises and falls before abruptly – just as Gary Pickles had done that fateful autumnal morning – I’m staring down into the steep-sided gully of Sycamore Gap.

Quite unexpectedly, the scene’s alive with colour and life: children are playing amid the spongy grass, watched by picnicking families, groups of hikers and dog walkers. A fenced-off square, adjacent to the wall, forms the focal point. Half a dozen people are leaning on this, admiring the vivid green and red shoots growing from a stump that still bears the lacerations and distinctive curved-tip imprints of a chainsaw. Some of the emerging shoots are already waist high.

The scene brings to mind a fresh gravestone surrounded by flowers. There are a few foreign accents, and some of those gathered are sombre and contemplative. But largely the atmosphere is one of curiosity and fond remembrance rather than mourning. “Good news! This tree stump is sprouting,” reads the maroon National Trust sign affixed to the fence. “Please give it the best chance of regrowth by remaining outside the fenced area and not touching the shoots.”

I climb a little way up the slope and recline against the steep bank in the sunshine. Devoid of the tree, it’s still a magnificent spot. Without the visual anchor of that distinguished landmark, you find your eye wandering to distant hills and valleys, picking out shapely groves and copses of sycamore and beech. Maybe, I reflect, we’ve all been a tad guilty of not seeing the woods for the tree.

We do have people, ordinary people, who do wrong things, but we also have many, many more, thankfully, who do right things”

Immediately after the felling, the National Trust reported a spike in visitor numbers to Sycamore Gap. Everyone expected that to fall away. It doesn’t seem to have been the case. Gary Pickles and his fellow rangers report heartening numbers whenever they go to the spot, and while the trust has no way to gauge precise figures, annual visitors to The Sill were up 20 percent in two years at last count, to 139,000. More than 12,000 people saw the temporary exhibition of the Sycamore Gap artwork in autumn 2024. The permanent exhibit, installed in July 2025, is expected to draw in far more.

Dark tourism expert Stone says the lure of infamy can often outstrip the appeal of the original landmark. It’s why the man I speak to in Carruthers’ village, Kirkbride, suggests – with tongue only slightly in cheek – that maybe the two convicted fellers should be billing the National Trust for their work.

A fence protects the stump of the Sycamore Gap tree. Shoots have emerged from the base, giving hope the historic tree will live on

People’s eagerness to continue to visit will be scant consolation to those mourning the tree, says Northumberland National Park officer Duncan Wise, but it is a consolation of sorts. Wise was instrumental in setting up the area’s International Dark Sky Reserve (IDSR), an initiative that’s worth £25m a year to the region. “I was personally devastated and I think it’s impacted us all,” says Wise. “But we’re adapting, just as nature does, and I think a positive legacy of this awful event really is possible. I think we’ll see this becoming a trigger and a stimulus for a lot of positive action in the future.”

Martina Irwin, from the Tree Sanctuary in Coventry, cautiously concurs. She expects the national and international “shock and abhorrence” to be channelled into more planting and protection measures, with the tree becoming a beacon for preservation. An arboreal martyr, of sorts. “You can talk about this tree anywhere in the world and they’ll know the story,” she says. “And stories are continuous, aren’t they? It’s our responsibility now to write the next chapter and make it a lot more positive.”

Gary Pickles is similarly sanguine. He’s worked in the countryside long enough to know that change is inevitable and that there are no quick fixes. Time and care is what’s needed. Nature – resilient, irrepressible – will do the rest. “That tree was put there by the Victorians even though they knew they would never benefit from it,” he says. “We must take a similar view. I’m angry about what happened, particularly because I don’t understand it. But you can carry anger about with you, or you can get on with your life.”

“Having worked in forestry I was always pretty confident there’d be new shoots,” he continues. “At some point, I know I’ll see something [at Sycamore Gap] from the road again. And when I do, it will make me smile.”

The fallen

Other infamous acts of arboreal vandalism

‘The Golden Spruce’, Sitka spruce tree

Revered for a mutation that gave it a golden appearance, the 300-year-old ‘Golden Spruce’ was cut down in Haida Gwaii, Canada, in 1977 by forest engineer Grant Hadwin. He claimed, bizarrely, that his chainsaw attack was a protest against the logging industry. Hadwin was arrested and released on bail; fearing for his safety on public transportation, he insisted that he should travel by kayak to his trial but disappeared en route and hasn’t been seen since.

‘The Tree of Knowledge’, Ghost gum (Corymbia papuana)

Famous as the rallying point for the 1891 shearers’ strike, in which 3,000 people protested against poor working conditions and low wages, the ‘Tree of Knowledge’, originally known as the ‘Alleluia Tree’, stood for 200 years in Barcaldine, Australia before being poisoned with herbicide in 2006 by an unknown attacker. Its withered remains are now housed under a protective structure and it remains a symbol of the labour movement in Queensland.

‘The Senator’, Bald cypress tree

Considered the largest and most ancient of its kind at around 3,500 years old, the Senator had been used by Native Americans as a landmark and was a prominent tourist spot for centuries in Seminole County, Florida. In January 2012, 26-year-old Floridian Sara Barnes lit a fire to help her see better at night while smoking methamphetamine, and reduced the Senator to a stump. Barnes was found guilty of arson and possession of drugs.

Words: Matilda Manning

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