LONDON: Two men appeared in court on Tuesday accused of chopping down one of the UK’s most iconic trees, with prosecutors saying the pair went on a “moronic mission” in a case that sparked national outrage.

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, have denied causing criminal damage after the 2023 felling of the tree at Sycamore Gap, which had stood for nearly 200 years in a dramatic dip in the landscape next to Hadrian’s Wall, a Unesco World Heritage site in northern England.

But prosecutors told Newcastle Crown Court the two men cut down the tree with a chainsaw “in an act of deliberate and mindless criminal damage,” which they filmed on Graham’s phone and then shared with others.

Prosecutor Richard Wright said the pair drove to the site near Hexham in Graham’s Range Rover and felled the tree on Sept 27, 2023, slicing through the trunk in “a matter of minutes”. “Having completed their moronic mission, the pair got back into the Range Rover and travelled back towards Carlisle” where they lived, he said.

He said a video of the act recovered from Graham’s phone was shared by the two men with “the unmistakable sound of a chainsaw, and a tree falling”. The next day, in a voice message from Graham to Carruthers, Graham said “it’s gone viral.

It is worldwide. It will be on ITV news tonight,” Wright said.

“They are loving it, they’re revelling in it. This is the reaction of the people that did it. They still think it’s funny, or clever, or big,” Wright said.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2025