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Europe|Men Who Felled Sycamore Gap Tree Are Given Prison Sentences in U.K.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/world/europe/sycamore-gap-tree-sentencing-prison.html
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The tree, a beloved landmark that stood by Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, was found illegally cut down in 2023.
July 15, 2025, 11:15 a.m. ET
Two men were sentenced to prison on Tuesday for felling Britain’s beloved Sycamore Gap tree in 2023, an act that a judge said had caused a “sense of loss and confusion across the world.”
The men, Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, were each handed sentences of four years and three months during a hearing in Newcastle, in northeastern England.
Under British sentencing rules for the offense they committed, criminal damage, the men could have been sent to prison for as little as six months, but Judge Christina Lambert said the “extraordinary social impact” of their crime had made it necessary to increase their punishment.
Judge Lambert said that the Sycamore Gap tree had been a “landmark” for Northumberland and “a symbol of the beauty of its untamed landscape,” and that for many it had been a “place of special personal significance” as the site of marriage proposals and memorials for loved ones.
She said that what had been a haven of “peace and tranquillity to which people returned year after year” was deliberately targeted by Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Graham, who then “reveled in their notoriety” as news spread of what they had done.
The tree, which stood in a picturesque dip along Hadrian’s Wall, the 70-mile fortification that once guarded the northern edge of the Roman Empire, was found illegally cut down in September 2023.
