It’s a peculiar trait of Britishness that the felling of a tree can provoke more outrage than crimes which, on the face of it, are far more serious.
There was no human ‘victim’ in the traditional sense when the Sycamore Gap tree was chopped down in the dead of night in September 2023.
But many thousands across the country were incensed and deeply affected by the seemingly inexplicable destruction of the 150-year-old landmark.
Two groundworkers, Daniel Graham, 39, and his former friend Adam Carruthers, 32, were today found guilty of causing criminal damage to the tree and Hadrian’s Wall, which was battered beneath the collapsing sycamore.
Presented with damning evidence over a two-week trial – including footage of the heinous act – jurors were left in no doubt who was behind what the prosecution called the ‘arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery.’
And yet even now, the question of why Graham and Carruthers travelled 40 miles from Carlisle that night to cut down the tree remains unanswered.
The answer may lie in the complex relationship between the pair, who were once inseparable but spent the past fortnight sat just a few feet apart in the dock at Newcastle Crown Court unable to look each other in the eye.
Daniel Graham, 39, and his former friend Adam Carruthers, 32, were today found guilty of causing criminal damage to the tree and Hadrian’s Wall
Were these men from one of Britain’s largely forgotten rural communities desperate to make their mark on the world – even if it meant destroying something beautiful?
Was this simply a mindless act of destruction for the sake of entertainment? Or was their motivation more nuanced?
We will attempt to unpick the reasoning behind their actions, but first it is necessary to explain the profile of their target, widely regarded as the UK’s most famous tree.
The sycamore was planted in the 1800s by wealthy lawyer and antiquarian John Clayton, who spent much of his lifetime buying land surrounding Hadrian’s Wall then fighting to preserve the Roman fortification.
Clayton banned quarrying near the Wall, forbade the use of Roman stone for new properties and moved existing buildings away from its forts and turrets.
Nestled in a dip in the wall, the sycamore became a tourist attraction in its own right, attracting visitors from across the globe after it appeared in the 1991 blockbuster Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner.
When it was mysteriously felled under the cover of darkness, it prompted a furious response from then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, tearful visits from mourners and international headline news coverage from India to the United States.
The sycamore was planted in the 1800s by wealthy lawyer and antiquarian John Clayton and became a tourist attraction in its own right after appearing in 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
The Sycamore Gap tree on the morning after it was felled in September 2023, which also caused damage to Hadrian’s Wall
Indeed, when the Mail visited the site we came across Elizabeth Watts Pope, 45, a books curator from Massachusetts in the US, who had been looking forward to visiting the tree since she first planned her trip to Britain two-and-a-half years ago.
‘It’s weird to come on a pilgrimage to something you know isn’t there anymore,’ Mrs Pope said as she approached the sad stump where once stood a magnificent 50ft-high broad-leafed sycamore.
During the trial, Carruthers insisted he could not understand the furore over its destruction as he considered it to be ‘just a tree.’
But even he was said to have had a fascination with the Sycamore Gap.
So much so that Graham insisted his co-defendant kept a length of string in his warehouse that he had used to measure the tree’s base, and refused to let him use it for a job due to its ‘sentimental’ value.
On the night of September 27, 2023, while Storm Agnes battered Britain with 60mph winds, the pair set off in Graham’s Land Rover, nicknamed ‘The Black Pig’, and drove 40 minutes from Carlisle to the Sycamore Gap.
A sinister low resolution video, shot from Graham’s phone, captured the silhouette of a man under the tree, the whining of the chainsaw as it slices through the trunk and the crack and crash as it collapses onto Hadrian’s Wall.
A sinister low resolution video, shot from Graham’s phone, captured the silhouette of a man under the tree
Prosecutors told Newcastle Crown Court photos were found on Daniel Graham’s phone after his arrest showing a piece of the Sycamore Gap tree and a chainsaw in the back of his Land Rover
The pair had used a technique familiar with tree surgeons, marking the tree with spray paint before cutting out a wedge that would dictate the direction in which it would fall.
Richard Wright KC, for the prosecution, said it was most likely that Carruthers was the man wielding the chainsaw, while Graham filmed the episode.
He told jurors it was a ‘moronic mission’ and the ‘arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery’.
Because of their denials, the motivation behind the felling has never been properly established.
Graham may have been driven by revenge over the fact that he faced eviction from his home due to environmental issues following a long-running dispute with the council, and his neighbours.
Graham bought a small plot of farmland in Grinsdale Bridge near the Cumbrian village of Kirkandrews-on-Eden in 2015, then established a number of buildings on the property and gained planning permission for a stable block, horse shelter and storage units.
Locals began complaining about his ‘shanty town’ when he moved into a caravan on the site shortly afterwards, using it as the base for his business, DM Graham Groundworks – which lists tree clearance among its services.
When neighbours complained about additional prefab buildings erected without planning permission, the noise of his dogs and the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the lorries he used in his groundwork business they were met with aggression.
And when an application to live there lawfully was rejected in April 2023, he faced the prospect of eviction.
The tree was felled five months later, and locals said they believed it was his way of taking revenge on those he felt had wronged him.
For Carruthers, he was said to have been driven by the desire for a unique ‘trophy’ for his newborn daughter Olivia – a wedge of wood from Britain’s most famous tree.
Regardless of motivation, it was a caper that would ultimately rip their relationship apart and lead them to betray each other.
The duo photographed the wedge from the sycamore in the boot of Graham’s car and took it home, Mr Wright said.
The following morning, when news broke of the vandalism, they shared social media posts about the tree with Graham saying to Carruthers ‘here we go.’
They boasted of their actions ‘going viral’ and scoffed at social media comments from horrified members of the public, who they said lacked the ‘minerals’ to ‘launch an operation like we did last night.’
They were arrested on October 31, 2023, and made their first appearance at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court in May the following year – strutting in side by side wearing balaclavas to obscure their faces.
Adam Carruthers arrives at Newcastle Crown Court wearing a balaclava to obscure his face
But soon after proceedings began, the relationship between the pair had evidently broken down.
Graham embarked on a fierce campaign designed to ensure his former friend took the rap for the felling of the tree.
The pair first met in 2021 when Carruthers, a mechanic, was hired to weld a galvanized chassis to a Land Rover belonging to Graham’s father.
This first meeting came at a pivotal time in Graham’s life as, while Carruthers was still working on the car, his father, Michael, took his own life.
Relatives said Graham, who ran his own building firm and lived on a smallholding just outside Carlisle, was ‘deeply affected’ by the death, his father having been the only family member with whom he maintained a close relationship.
‘He was a smashing little lad,’ a relative who did not wish to be named, told the Mail.
‘When he was a little boy he was fine. When he was little we would take him to the Lakes [District] and fell walking. When he got to his teens we just lost contact.
‘He was outdoorsy. He would go fishing with his dad. He liked haaf net fishing in the Solway. But as he got older, his mum had a lot of trouble with him. He would be nasty towards her. He was close to his dad.’
Haaf net fishing is a traditional British method which involves standing chest-deep in the sea and using large framed nets to scoop up fish.
Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers, pictured working together. The relationship between the pair has evidently broken down since
A photograph that was shown to the jury during the trial, showing a collection of chainsaws
After Michael’s death in June 2021, Graham asked Carruthers if he could make sure the car was ready for his funeral.
The mechanic then ‘called in some favours’ and worked round the clock to make it happen.
‘That was three or four years ago, we became good friends and saw each other on a fairly regular basis, two or three times a week, maybe four, and we were on the phone every day,’ Carruthers later told the trial.
The friendship quickly settled into affectionate routine – Graham would regularly drop by Carruthers’ home carrying a milkshake for his friend, and Carruthers would turn up at his caravan with a pizza for his elder companion.
Graham even had an affectionate nickname for Carruthers, referring to him as ‘Jeffrey’ in text messages and voice notes.
And he admitted that the mechanic was one of the only people in his life he socialised with regularly.
So close was he to Carruthers that during his police interview Graham reacted angrily to the suggestion his friend would stay over at his home.
‘Are you trying to say we are p**fters or something?’ he snarled.
Graham and Carruthers, seen here in a court sketch, were described by Richard Wright KC as ‘two men who did everything together and who you can be sure were there together that night as well’
‘No he doesn’t stay over, definitely not.’
In his closing speech, Richard Wright KC described the men as ‘the odd couple, two men who did everything together and who you can be sure were there together that night as well.’
But by August 2024, nearly a year after their arrest, the friendship had degenerated enough for Graham to make an anonymous phone call to the police in an attempt to implicate his friend and save himself.
Officers instantly recognised Graham’s voice as he breathlessly told them that ‘one of the lads that [did] it, Adam Carruthers,’ had taken his chainsaws back home.
The ‘anonymous caller’ said if police searched Carruthers’ home and workshop they would find the saws and part of the felled tree, along with a shotgun and a pistol.
No firearms, chainsaws or the tree wedge were found, however.
Meanwhile, Graham called his home Millbeck Stables, bizarrely named after the impressive mansion across the road owned by one of Cumbria’s wealthiest men, building magnate Fred Story.
A neighbour in the village, Grinsdale Bridge, described Graham as a ‘sociopath and a bully.’
‘I feel certain that he was the driving force behind what happened at Sycamore Gap because Adam doesn’t have the brains to plan such a thing,’ they added.
Even Graham’s grandmother, Joan, 86, was unable to muster a good word about her grandson.
‘He hasn’t been part of my life for a few years and I’m happy for it to stay that way,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he’ll cope well in jail but that’s his own fault.’
Graham blamed his mother, Karen, in part for the 2021 suicide of his father Michael, a refuse worker, relatives said.
On December 1, 2024, days before the trial was originally scheduled to begin, Graham took to Facebook to directly accuse Carruthers of felling the tree, posting a series of images of his former friend.
‘I truly would not do it,’ he wrote.
‘It’s my picture everywhere. Well, here’s a picture of the man with [the] hidden face.’
Days before the trial was originally scheduled to begin, Graham went on Facebook to directly accuse Carruthers of felling the tree
In a frosty exchange with Mr Wright during his cross examination, Graham tried to justify turning on his friend.
He said Carruthers and an associate had tried to intimidate him into taking the blame for cutting down the tree, insisting that the criminal justice system would be lenient towards him due to his mental health issues.
He added: ‘If someone is costing me money and affecting my business then I will f***ing grass. ‘No doubt about it he [Carruthers] is the one holding the chainsaw. Adam felled the tree, I don’t know 100 per cent who the other person was.
‘I was annoyed about my business suffering through his actions.’
To explain away number plate and phone site evidence against him, Graham insisted that Carruthers and an accomplice had taken his car, with his phone inside, and driven to the Sycamore Gap without his knowledge while he had been sleeping in his caravan.
Carruthers, for his part, did not directly accuse Graham of being involved in felling the tree.
But he insisted that on the evening the tree was felled he had tried to take his partner and young children for a meal at the Metrocentre in Gateshead but turned back because their 11-day-old baby was unsettled.
Jurors rejected these flimsy alibis and found the pair unanimously guilty of causing criminal damage worth £622,191 to the tree and £1,144 worth of damage to Hadrian’s Wall, a Unesco world heritage site owned by the National Trust.
They now face up to ten years in prison.
On July 15 this pair of former friends will once more sit side by side in the dock, grimly avoiding each other’s gaze, as they learn how many years’ freedom their final ‘moronic mission’ will cost them.
