Sycamore Gap accused said it was 'just a tree', court told

Wales Online

06-05-2025

Sycamore Gap accused said it was 'just a tree', court told
Adam Carruthers said the reaction to the damage was 'almost as if someone had been murdered'
The Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian's Wall
(Image: © 2025 PA Media, All Rights Reserved )
One of the two men on trial accused of felling the famous Hadrian's Wall tree that stood in what was known as Sycamore Gap told a court it was "just a tree".
Adam Carruthers told Newcastle Crown Court that he felt the reaction to the damage was 'almost as if someone had been murdered'.
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Prosecutors say Daniel Graham, 39, and mechanic Carruthers, 32, drove overnight to the Northumberland landmark during Storm Agnes and cut the tree down with a chainsaw.
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The pair deny two counts of criminal damage to the tree and to Hadrian's Wall, which was damaged when the tree fell on it.
Carruthers said: 'On the morning I woke up I had looked online and it was all over Facebook. I was thinking 'What's going on here?'. It was everywhere.
'My understanding was it was just a tree, I couldn't understand why everyone was sharing it, every second post, it was about this tree. I just couldn't get my head round it.
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'The way it was travelling through the news, I was amazed how something so small could create so much publicity.'
His barrister Andrew Gurney asked him he and Graham had been messaging each other about the story.
In reply, he said: 'I couldn't really understand why there was such a major outbreak – it was almost as if someone had been murdered.
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'Daniel was a friend of mine at the time. I sent it across, it was everywhere.'
Carruthers said that on the night the tree was felled in September 2023 he was staying with his partner of 10 years because she had just given birth to their daughter and needed help looking after their two children.
In cross-examination, Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, asked Carruthers: 'Is that what's at the heart of this? You thought it was 'just a tree', and when the rest of the world didn't think it was 'just a tree' and it was a terrible and wicked thing to have done, you've lost your bottle and can't own up to it?'
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Carruthers replied: 'That's not true.'
Chris Knox, defending Graham, asked Carruthers why he told police he had not left Cumbria on the day the Sycamore Gap tree was cut down.
Mr Knox told the court Carruthers had gone on a 'reconnoitre' that day and that his phone had been traced to cell sites in the afternoon going from his home in Kirkbride to Carlisle and then as far east as Haydon Bridge in Northumberland.
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Carruthers said he and his partner had decided to take their children for a meal at the Metrocentre in Gateshead but turned the car around because their baby would not settle.
He agreed with Mr Wright that that would have been a three-hour round trip.
The trial continues.