“Theft joy”: The sadness and symbolism of crime in Sycamore Gap | Northumberland

“IT was just a tree, ”said a mystified Adam Carruthers, one of the two men who illegally felled the tree in Sycamore Gap in the early morning hours of a stormy night almost two years ago.” It was almost as if someone had been murdered. “

Carruthers was right with the reaction to the fall. Many compared his loss with that of a good friend or relative. His destruction led to feelings of sadness, grief and then the blind anger. Some people cried.

Carruthers was wrong to only see it as a tree. It was a beautiful, life -resistant place for countless photographs, declarations of love, engagements, birthdays and ash scattering, but it was also more than that. Many considered it part of the DNA of northeastern England. His cases was regarded as a symbol for the broader war of humanity against nature. His legacy quickly becomes hope and optimism.

What is certain is that none of these feelings or complexities or nuances in the minds of Carruthers (32) and Daniel Graham (39) were when they traveled from their houses in Cumbria across the border to Northumberland on September 27, 2023.

When Storm raged Agnes, the two friends in Grahams Black Range Rover Sport set off with a chainsaw in the boot. When they arrived at the tree, which had stood on Hadrian's wall since the late 19th century, they decidedly and methodically decided. They apparently saw it as a laugh.

One man cut off the tree while the other filmed him on Graham's iPhone 14.

After the film material, which lasted two minutes and 40 seconds, a complete courtroom in Newcastle was shown for silence. It was terrible and annoying to see. The judge ordered a 15-minute break.

The film improved by police experts shows a silhouetted man who carries the chainsaw. His terrible, penetrating speed echoes through the windy emptiness. After the speed is set up, the tree tore and fall on the wall.

It took minutes to destroy a tree that had been standing for more than 100 years, said prosecutor Richard Wright KC.

At the time of the crime, Graham lived in a caravan in a hamlet near Carlisle, from which he led a basic business. Carruthers, father of two children, including a new baby, lived with his partner in a caravan in Kirkbride.

After the death of Graham's father, the couple became “obsessively” close friends. Carruthers repaired the father of the father to his funeral in good time and Graham was grateful.

Graham claimed that Carruthers had a “fascination” with the tree and thought it was a good trophy. He claimed that Carruthers even had a length of strings in his workshop, with which he had measured the scope of the tree and kept for sentimental reasons.

After he had fake the tree, the two men drove back and Carruthers' partner, the mother of his newborn daughter, sent him a video in which her baby was fed. Carruthers replied: “I have a better video than that” before I sent film material of the tree that was felled.

The next day, the police received a report that the tree had been damaged. People initially assumed that it was the result of the storm that had beaten Northumberland that night.

It soon turned out that the tree had been deliberately lowered. The tree became famous after appearing in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with the characters of Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman, who were played underneath when they walked along the wall.

Kim McGuinness, then Northumbria Police and Criminal Code and now the mayor of Metro, said that the fall was “joy”. For time differences, there are stories of people in Great Britain first, which had happened in other parts of the world from relatives.

The first police officer was PC Peter Borini, who knew the Sycamore Gap Tree well. The jury observed film material how he went through wet grass to the felled tree and immediately treated it as a crime scene that asked people to withdraw and take off adhesive tape.

As anger grew, Carruthers and Graham grew the headlines. The voice messages found on telephones included Graham to Carruthers, whose nickname Jeffrey is: “Jeffrey, it's about damn sky news while we are talking.” Then: “Jeffrey, it has become viral. It is worldwide. It will be in ITV News this evening.”

In another case, they made fun of a comment for social media who said the perpetrators were weak.

“Weak … damn weak? Does he recognize how heavy shit is?” asked Graham.

Carruthers replied and said he would like to see the commentator, “start an operation like last night. I don't think he has the minerals.”

A wooden wedge that was photographed in the back of Graham's Range Rover, according to a forensic botanist, with a almost certainty came from the Sycamore Gap Tree.

Graham and Carruthers were only arrested and interviewed on October 31, and both men denied the participation.

Graham said he was “sewn” and he knew who accused him of. He said he was framed as part of a dispute for the crime, with someone “stirring the pot”.

Both men said they didn't have the abilities to reduce such a large tree. Carruthers, a mechanic, said he thought that chainsaws were “bad things” and he would rather “stay with tensioners”.

In the police interviews, Graham refused to name who was responsible and said he was not a “grass”.

In the process, however, he accused Carruthers and said that his friend had a “foreign interest” on the tree. “At that time I didn't know about the tree,” said Graham. “He told me it was the most famous tree in the world.”

Graham accepted that his car and iPhone had been used in the production of the Sycamore Gap Tree, but claimed that he was not there, but slept with his dogs in his caravan after taking a sleeping pill.

Carruthers did not think about who was responsible for his defense, but insisted that it was not him. He was also at home.

He denied that he sent Facebook messages to his partner while he had driven back from Sycamore Gap. He said he actually sent news while they were both in the same caravan because he didn't want to wake them up.

There were others similarly unplausible claims that a jury on the Newcastle Crown Court found as lies.

The public prosecutor said the couple loved how to fall the Sycamore gap viral. They sent messages for the message and indulged in their shame. They found themselves “funny or smart or big,” said Wright.

The tree itself was probably planted in the late 19th century by a man whose name will be known to everyone who knows Newcastle, where the Clayton Street was once an important shopping destination. It was the home of Woolworths and many clothes shops, such as Geordie Girl.

It was named after John Clayton, the city clerk who worked with the architect John Dobson and the master builder Richard Grainger to renovate the center of Newcastle in the neoclassical style. It was Clayton's decision to plant a Sycamore tree on land in a Dell that he had just because it was a beautiful place.

According to the Andrew Poad of the National Trust: “He was an incredibly visionary man. A really unconditional hero. He planted it as a landscape feature in the full knowledge that he would not see in his life. He took the long -term view.”

And this view was the driving force behind everything that has happened since the fall.

Seedlings from seeds that were recovered at the location have the title “Trees of Hope” and 49 of them – one for every foot of its size – were given good causes throughout the UK. You will grow in a NEURONE DISEASE Center Motone, which is named after the late rugby league star Rob Burrow and in the memory of Holly Newton, a Northumberland school girl murdered by her forced ex-boyfriend.

King Charles, the next school and the nation's 15 national parks also receive seedlings.

The tree was also used as art, also as part of an exhibition by the artist Charlie Whinney last year.

It was never just a tree. The natural writer Robert MacFarlane sees his Zer “as a request to people to take their relationship with the natural world into account.

The tree is gone and it looked like this for a long time. Then something remarkable happened last summer: fragile green shoots were created from the tree stump.

“To see signs of life … is amazing,” said PoAD. What view of future generations of Sycamore gap is unknown – but there will be one.