Men of the United Kingdom sentenced to more than 4 years in prison for reducing the iconic sicomore gap tree

London – Two British men were sentenced to more than four years in prison on Tuesday for reducing one of the most emblematic trees in England, the Sicomorous gap tree. The couple was found guilty in May of what a judge called a “deliberate and meaningless” act of cutting down the tree as an apparent joke.

Judge Christina Lambert sentenced Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers four years and three months in prison during an audience at the Newcastle Crown Court on Tuesday.

The tree remained for almost 200 years in a picturesque valley in northern England, right next to the remains of Hadrian’s Wall, a Unesco world heritage site. The stone wall was built by the Roman occupants of Great Britain almost 2,000 years ago as a defensive structure, and the part of the wall where the tree appeared in a scene of the 1991 Hollywood box office success “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”, with Kevin Costner, bringing the bucolic place and the big tree some degree of international fame.

A jury in the same court had sentenced the former friends for two charges of criminal damage for their 2023 tree felling, for damaging both the Arce tree of the sicomor and the Roman wall. They had faced a possible maximum prayer of 10 years in jail.

Reacting to the guilt verdict in May, the National Conservation Organization of Trust said that the “unnecessary felling” of the tree had “shocked people throughout the country and abroad.”

“It felt particularly deeply here in the northeast of England, where the tree was an emblem of the region and the backdrop for many personal memories,” said a spokesman.

Prosecutor Richard Wright told the Court that the couple led to the site, near the city of Hexham, in the Range Rover of Graham and knocked down the tree on the night of September 27, 2023, cutting the trunk with a chainsaw in “a matter of minutes.”

“Having completed their fool mission, the couple returned to Range Rover and traveled back to Carlisle,” where they lived, he said.

The couple was jointly accused of causing £ 622,191 ($ 832,821) of criminal damage to the tree and £ 1,144 to damage to Hadrian wallwhich once extended throughout the country from the northwest to the northeast of England.

The Sycamore was a symbol of the northeast of England and a key attraction photographed by millions of visitors over the years, winning the tree of the year of Woodland Trust in 2016. Efforts are being made to see if you can be again its bacon or seeds.

The National Trust, owner of the wall and the tree, said that 49 firings of the seeds of the sicomor have grown, which will be planted this winter in sites throughout the United Kingdom.

A section of the trunk that has more than six feet now forms the central piece of an art installation on a permanent screen in a visitors center near where the sicomorous gap tree was. People can see and touch part of the trunk, and “can meet, sit and reflect” once again, “according to the Visitors Center.

• Cinema
• Kevin Costner
• Great Britain
• Fallen trees
• United Kingdom