Two friends who filmed themselves cutting down the famous Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall during a ‘moronic mission’ have been found guilty of criminal damage.
Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers drove 40 minutes at night to reach the remote spot in Northumberland, in September 2023.
They took just 2min 41sec to fell the centuries-old tree in a ‘mindless act of vandalism’, jurors at Newcastle Crown Court were told.
The pair took a wedge of the trunk as a trophy and spent the next day ‘revelling’ in news reports about the crime.
Each man denied any involvement, despite video footage of a man felling the tree with a chainsaw being found on Graham’s phone, along with messages gloating about what they had done.
It has now emerged that the crime could have its roots in a planning row, with Graham, 39, facing eviction at the time.
Town hall bosses in Cumberland had rejected his application to live in his caravan at Millbeck Stables at Grinsdale Bridge, near Carlisle, months earlier in April 2023.
Graham also ran his business from the caravan, with neighbours objecting to the ‘large commercial vehicles’ which would drive in and out of the rural site.
In planning documents, the parish council objected to his application, saying that neighbours and planning officials had ‘felt threatened by the dominant and oppressive behaviour displayed by the proposer’.
Another neighbour complained of the countryside at Grinsdale Bridge, near another section of Hadrian’s Wall, ‘being destroyed’.
Graham, who had lived on the site since he bought it in 2016, had told planning officials then he would use the caravan as a ‘tea/bait room’ but had instead lived in it without authorisation.
Council tax had not been paid on the caravan, planning documents said.
The removal of the felled Sycamore Gap tree, on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland (Picture: PA)
The planning row continued after Graham was first arrested when, just over a month after he and his former friend Adam Carruthers, 32, committed their act of ‘deliberate and mindless criminal damage’, the 39-year-old applied for permission to build a hay store and tractor shed.
Neighbours objected again, with one saying Graham’s property was an ‘illegal builders’ yard’.
Another objection noted Graham’s ‘demonstrable prolonged disregard for planning control’.
Carruthers, who was also convicted of criminal damage on Friday, often worked with Graham in his landscaping business.
Neighbours told The Telegraph ‘it wasn’t worth confronting’ Graham.
One said: ‘The field used to be peaceful countryside and he came in, put in a Portakabin and started building. He didn’t bother waiting for permission – he just went ahead and did it and moved in.’
Another told the newspaper: ‘(Graham) completely destroyed the look and peace of this area. It was unbelievable that he managed to establish a home there on what had previously been a green field.
‘Now people have to look at this shanty town he’s created and has tried to hide by bulldozing a wall of earth up to head height as shelter.
‘It is an eyesore and a blight on a beautiful area.’
Adam Carruthers and Daniel Graham working together (Picture: CPS/PA)
Some locals now believe the crime was part of Graham’s quest for revenge.
‘It’s what everyone around here was saying and it makes perfect sense,’ one told the Sun.
‘He considered that caravan his permanent home and had asked the council to legally recognise that.
‘When they refused the only way it could ever have ended for him was being evicted.
‘He’s a tree surgeon, he cuts trees down all the time – what better way, in his eyes, for him to take revenge?’
The council issued Graham with an enforcement notice over the ‘unauthorised sitting of a caravan for residential use’ in September 2024, which he appealed against.
Planning inspector Mark Harbottle dismissed the appeal on April 28, the day before the Sycamore Gap trial began.
Graham, whose address was still listed as Millbeck Stables, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, made no visible reaction when the jury returned after just over five hours to convict him and Carruthers of two counts of criminal damage.
Prosecutors said Graham and Carruthers were the ‘odd couple’ who did everything together had thought it would be ‘a bit of a laugh’.
But they soon realised they ‘weren’t the big men they thought they were’ when they saw the public outrage they had caused by committing ‘the arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery’.
Both were each found guilty of two counts of criminal damage – one to the much-photographed tree and one to Hadrian’s Wall, which was damaged when the sycamore fell on it.
There was no visible reaction from either in the dock as the jury returned after just over five hours to convict them of causing £622,191 of criminal damage to the tree and £1,144 of damage to the wall.
The trial heard the ‘totemic’ sycamore had stood for more than 100 years in a dramatic dip in Hadrian’s Wall, becoming a popular spot for everything from picnics to proposals – and achieving worldwide fame when it was featured in the 1991 Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.
Opening the case to jurors, prosecutor Richard Wright KC said: ‘Though the tree had grown for over a hundred years, the act of irreparably damaging it was the work of a matter of minutes.’
Jurors heard Graham and Carruthers were ‘best of pals’ at the time and regularly worked together felling trees.
The court heard Graham’s Land Rover was picked up on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras between Carlisle and Sycamore Gap at night on September 27, 2023, and returning early the next morning.
His phone was traced to cell sites making the same journey.
Daniel Graham is said to have replied to Adam Carruthers and commented on how heavy the tree was. the court heard (Picture: NNP)
When police arrested the pair and searched Graham’s phone, they found a two minute and 41 second video which showed the sycamore being cut down at 12.30am on September 28, and had been sent to Carruthers.
They also found photos and videos of a wedge of tree trunk and a chainsaw in the boot of Graham’s Range Rover, although these have never been found.
Messages and voice notes between Graham and Carruthers the next day showed them talking about the story going ‘wild’ and ‘viral’, referring to ‘an operation like we did last night’ and joking that damage looked like it had been done by a professional.
But, Mr Wright said, by the time their trial started 18 months later, the pair had ‘lost their courage’ and their once close friendship had collapsed, with each apparently blaming the other.
Graham accused Carruthers of taking his Range Rover and mobile phone to Sycamore Gap that night without his knowledge.
He said he had now turned on his former friend because his business was being affected by Carruthers’ actions.
Adam Carruthers arrives at Newcastle Crown Court (Picture: PA)
Graham claimed during his evidence that Carruthers had a fascination with the sycamore, saying he had described it as ‘the most famous tree in the world’ and spoken of wanting to cut it down, even keeping a piece of string in his workshop that he had used to measure the circumference.
Carruthers denied this and told the court he could not understand the outcry over the story, saying it was ‘just a tree’.
Cross examining Carruthers, Wright asked him: ‘Is that what’s at the heart of this?
‘You thought it was “just a tree”, and when the rest of the world didn’t think it was “just a tree” and it was a terrible and wicked thing to have done, you’ve lost your bottle and can’t own up to it?’
They will be sentenced on July 15.
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