Two men who cut an extremely famous maple at the base near the Hadrian wall in England, will know their pain on Tuesday, almost two years after this act of vandalism which had turned upside down beyond the borders.
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Currently incarcerated, Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers risk up to 10 years in prison.
The “Sycamore Gap Tree”, a majestic sycamore maple, nestled for more than 100 years between two hills in a spectacular landscape of Northumberland (North) was one of the most photographed trees in England. He was known worldwide since his appearance in “Robin des Bois: Prince des thieves” with Kevin Costner in 1991.
During the night of September 27 to 28, 2023, the two friends, armed with a chainsaw, had led for 40 minutes to a parking lot, a 20 -minute market in the dark and one of them had filmed the other while he slaughtered the tree, then sending him the video. They also took a piece of the trunk as a trophy.
It was “just a tree”
The next day, Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers were delighted with the media coverage of this case, welcoming each other in a history that has become “viral”, sending voice messages and press articles in support.
These men, now enemies, then rejected themselves the responsibility of the cutting, Carruthers claiming that he had stayed at his home that evening, Graham, telling the opposite that Carruthers had borrowed his car and acted with someone else.
During their trial in May in Newcastle (northeast), where they were both deemed guilty, Carruthers explained that he did not understand the emotion caused by the destruction of the maple. It was “just a tree,” he said.
The two men never explained why they attacked this famous Sycomore.
His fall also damaged the Hadrian wall, a Roman fortification 135 km long built between 122 and 127 AD. AD and registered on the World Heritage List by UNESCO.
The jurors were able to see a video shot at night, in which we hear the sound of a chainsaw, then from the fall of a tree.
Daniel Graham’s mobile phone and his car had been located near the site.
Renaissance
This act of vandalism provoked sorrow and anger in the United Kingdom “but also internationally”, underlines the government agency Historic England.
Place of marriage and family memories, extremely photogenic, the maple had been elected English tree of the year in 2016.
Last year, the National Trust, the organization managing many places of the British heritage, of which the site where it was, announced that new shoots had appeared on the strain.
The National Trust has also recovered seeds and obtained 49 young plants, objects of all care, which must be replanted next winter in spaces accessible to the public, including parks, hospitals and schools.
Part of the trunk has also been transformed into a work of art, which visitors can now hug, at the Northumberland National Park reception center.
In this permanent exhibition, designed by artist Charlie Whinney, the trunk more than two meters high is surrounded by three oak benches from which visitors can read soil poetic words, linked to the initial sorrow created by its destruction, staged as a branched sculpture.
