“It’s one of the most asked questions that I get,” says the detective who helped bring to justice the two men who cut down the Sycamore Gap tree in the middle of a stormy September night two years ago. “As soon as anybody knows I’m involved in the investigation, the first question is: ‘Why?’”
Why would anyone cut down a tree that brought only joy and happiness to people? Did Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers see it as a lark? Or a challenge? Was it a cry for help? A yell of anger?
Was it no more than an act of “drunken stupidity”, as suggested by Carruthers’ barrister Andrew Gurney? Both men were sober, the prosecution argued.
DI Calum Meikle, of Northumbria police, genuinely does not know, he says, and thinks we might never know. “That is potentially the biggest frustration that people hold. Because if there was an obvious reason, if there was an obvious grudge, then people could understand it.”
What the detective, the son of a forester, does believe is that Graham and Carruthers had no idea of the ramifications of what was described in court as a “moronic mission” to cut down the famous tree. “I don’t think they fully understood the enormity of their actions.”
Graham and Carruthers have been sentenced after being found guilty by a jury in May at one of the highest-profile criminal damage trials held in the UK.
It is a measure of how seriously the state viewed the crime that one of the north’s leading KCs, Richard Wright, led the prosecution in court one of Newcastle’s huge postmodern quayside crown court building, and a high court judge oversaw the case – Mrs Justice Lambert, who was, until 1 January, the presiding judge of the north-eastern circuit.
“It was just a tree,” Carruthers told a jury, while also swearing blind that he had nothing to do with its felling. The huge public and media reaction mystified him. “It was almost as if someone had been murdered,” he said.
The sycamore tree in a dip on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland was most likely planted in the late 19th century at the behest of the landowner John Clayton, Newcastle’s town clerk who is recognised as “the man who saved Hadrian’s Wall”.
Clayton owned land containing 20 miles of the wall, including five forts, and organised a number of pioneering excavations. He did everything he could to protect the wall and could also surely see where was a good spot to plant a tree.
He would never see just how wonderful the spot he chose for the sycamore tree was, but countless generations who followed have.
In 1991, the tree featured in the Hollywood film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in a scene with Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman. It looks almost too beautiful. It helped put the tree into the wider public consciousness to the point where, in more recent decades, it became a place for birthday celebrations, marriage proposals and the spreading of ashes.
It was one of the most photographed trees in the UK, but also morphed into something much bigger. It had a cultural identity. People said it felt like it was part of the DNA of north-east England.
When Danny Boyle filmed 28 Years Later, set in the north-east, he of course featured Sycamore Gap just as he, of course, featured Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North.
The tree had gone when Boyle filmed, but he reasoned that “all the things that have happened to us in the last 28 years have not happened”. So he recreated it. Its survival in the rage virus apocalypse was a wonderful tribute to the tree, he said.
In reality, the tree has gone. Early suspects in the keenly watched investigation included an elderly former lumberjack – who was evicted from his home near the wall – and a teenager. Both were arrested and cleared of any involvement.
Meikle said “a single strand of intelligence” led police to Graham and Carruthers, who drove from their homes in Cumbria over the border to Northumberland on 27 September 2023 with one thing in mind.
It was a night deliberately chosen by the pair, the court heard, because Storm Agnes was raging and, as experienced tree fellers would know, it is easier to fell a tree in a storm.
Graham and Carruthers were once the best of friends who talked on the phone to each other every day. They were described as an “odd couple” who “stumbled on each other” about four years ago after Carruthers restored the Land Rover of Graham’s father who, before it was completed, killed himself.
The picture Graham painted of his life was a bleak one. The court heard he rarely socialised with anyone other than his on-off girlfriend. He lived in a caravan on a plot of land four miles from Carlisle with his two dogs for company. He had trouble sleeping and never made plans, he told police.
The land was the base for Graham’s groundworks business, which included tree-work – work for which he enlisted the help of Carruthers.
They were the best of friends but by the time of the trial they could barely look each other in the eye.
Since their arrest, Graham had turned against Carruthers. Graham denied being involved but told police he knew who was responsible, although he would not reveal the guilty man’s identity because he had young children.
That supposed reluctance soon changed. He showed police a photograph of Carruthers holding owls while in the background were chainsaws.
Concerned that the police were not making enough progress, Graham made an anonymous call to 101 telling them that “one of the lads that done it, Adam Carruthers, has got the saws back in his possession”. If they went to the property where Carruthers lived with his partner and children, they would also find a section of the tree, he said. He also warned that there were firearms on the property.
Police found nothing to incriminate Carruthers, or firearms.
Graham claimed Carruthers had a “fascination” and “strange interest” in the tree. He said his mechanic friend even had a length of string in his workshop, which he used to measure the tree’s circumference and kept for sentimental reasons.
In his interviews and evidence, Carruthers offered no thoughts on who was responsible but insisted it was not him. He was at home in his caravan on an airfield at Kirkbride, Cumbria, at the time, he said.
The evidence against Graham and Carruthers was overwhelming, not least that police could prove that it was Graham’s phone that was used to film the act of the tree being felled at 12.32am on 28 September 2023.
That footage, lasting two minutes and 40 seconds, and enhanced by digital experts, was shown to a packed, silent, stunned courtroom. The terrible revving of the chainsaw in the Northumberland emptiness is followed by the sound of the tree cracking and crashing to the ground.
Carruthers and Graham insisted they were not there. Messages between the men, which showed them revelling in the publicity and anger that followed the felling, had been misinterpreted, they said.
A jury found the two men guilty, but the question of “why” remains.
The prosecution suggested it was “a bit of a laugh” for the pair.
It emerged after the trial that Graham was embroiled in a planning row and faced eviction – was the crime something to do with the bleakness of his life?
Whatever the reasons for what the prosecution called “mindless thuggery”, the tree has gone – but in a way, it will never go.
Saplings grown from seeds recovered at the site have been titled “trees of hope” and have been given to good causes across the UK.
At a visitor centre near Sycamore Gap, the Sill, people can see a section of the tree in a permanent art display created by Charlie Whinney. It’s regarded as “the people’s tree” and visitors are free to photograph, touch or even hug it.
And at the site of the felled tree there are signs of growth from the stump, which have been described as “astonishing”. Sycamore Gap has gone, but there will be a sequel.
