Sycamore Gap, before the tree was felled. Photo: Bob Smith Photography

Two Cumbrian men have each been jailed for four years three months for felling the Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, were found guilty of criminal damage in a trial at Newcastle Crown Court in May this year.

Jailing the pair on Tuesday, the judge Mrs Justice Lambert said their motivation wasn’t clear, but both men were equally to blame.

The tree, which stood in a dip on the Roman wall, was visited by thousands of people every year to take pictures, celebrate birthdays, enjoy picnics and even to propose marriage.

Daniel Graham. Photo: Northumbria Police

Graham, of Carlisle, and Carruthers, from Wigton used a chainsaw to fell the tree in the middle of the night during a storm on 28m September 2023. The men had denied criminal damage but a jury found them guilty at their trial earlier this year.

The prosecutor called the incident a ‘moronic mission’.

The judge rejected the men’s statement that they were drunk during the act.

Adam Carruthers. Photo: Northumbria Police

The pair will serve no more than 40 per cent of their sentence in prison, and time spent on remand will count towards their jail time. Graham’s vehicle and mobile phone, which were used in the crime, were ordered to be destroyed.

Sycamore Gap was voted English Tree of the Year in 2016 in the Woodland Trust’s awards. The tree stood centrally in a col between two rises on the Whin Sill, the geological feature on which Hadrian’s Wall was built. The site, which featured in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, is near Crag Lough and stands on the route of both the Pennine Way and Hadrian’s Wall Path national trails.