Sycamore Gap yob's family feud that spiralled into disasterous revenge plot
Daniel Graham was convicted of cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree - but the yob was already embroiled in a bitter family feud which has left him with no home to go to
Daniel Graham, who is found guilty alongside Adam Carruthers for cutting down the iconic Sycamore Gap tree, is caught up in a bitter family row.
The news that shocked the nation left people in disgust over the act and the pair have been convicted of two counts of criminal damage. The famous tree had been growing in a dip on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland for more than 100 years before it was savagely cut down by Graham and Carruthers.
The pair could face up to 10 years in prison for the destruction of the landmark. However, when Graham is released from prison, he won't have a home to return to. A decision made shortly before his trial saw Cumberland council decree his eviction from the land he used to call home.
Adding to Graham's woes, his family turned their backs on him and he was embroiled in a fierce argument with his paternal grandmother, Joan Graham at his father's funeral.
In response to his charges, his grandmother Joan, 86, did not have a good word for him. "He hasn't been part of my life for a few years and I'm happy for it to stay that way," she said. "I don't think he'll cope well in jail but that's his own fault."
She recounted their last exchange: "The last words he spoke to me were about this time last year. I was crossing the road on a pedestrian crossing and he pipped his horn and I looked up and he shouted 'Hey, you, f**k off'. He started carrying on and shouted at me at my son's funeral and I haven't spoken about him properly since. I think he will be scared of going to jail. "
The yob confessed to being a "man with no friends" - his only visitor outside of work was his on-off girlfriend, Lisa Brown, whom he constantly referred to as his "bird". He led a solitary life in a caravan next to the ramshackle huts used for storing equipment for his groundwork business at Millbeck Bridge, near Carlisle Cumbria.
The bitter family feud resulted in Graham, an avid horseman, living alone at the secluded property for years. He was raised on Carlisle's Harraby estate and had lived with his parents Karen and Michael.
A previous neighbour revealed: "Dan loved horses and he had his own carriage which he used to hire out for brides on their wedding day. It was his pride and joy and he kept it in pristine condition. I can't speak badly of him, he was good to his neighbours and used to take the kids around the block in his carriage.
"It was a shock when I heard he'd been accused of cutting down that tree, it's so senseless and doesn't square with the lad we knew when he lived in Harraby. He was close to his dad and took it hard when he lost him. He just seemed to lose his way."
It's claimed that Graham had a grudge against authorities who rejected his bid to live near Hadrian's Wall. He had made an application for a 'Lawful Development Certificate' in 2022. The ground worker had taken up residence in a caravan next to his stables at Millbeck Stables on the edge of Carlisle, Cumbria, within Hadrian's Wall's UNESCO World Heritage site 'buffer zone'.
Residents and planning officials from Beaumont Parish Council, a remote Cumbrian rural community, told how they felt threatened by Graham's 'dominant and oppressive behaviour'. The council rejected his retrospective bid to live on the site of his Millbeck Stables and warned he faced eviction.
In a 'decision and reasons report', Graham was told that the application was 'far beyond a replacement dwelling' as he had claimed. One of the reasons for objecting to his plans was because of its proximity to Hadrian's Wall.
When he was charged with felling the tree, a neighbour told of his grudge against the authorities. "When he was refused permission to live there, many people thought he said 'right, I will show them'," said one woman, who declined to be named.
"They thought that could have motivated him to do it. His site grew and grew, there were big lorries going back and forth all the time.
"He built a mound to hide what was going on there. When we saw all the police vehicles there, after the tree was felled, we initially thought it was to do with the hunt for a missing person. Later, it became apparent that he had been questioned over the tree."
She added: "His behaviour did not change once he was arrested. He still had people going back and forth at all hours of the day and night."
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BBC News
25-05-2025
- BBC News
Meet the man who sketched the Sycamore Gap trial
The trial of two men who chopped down the much-loved and world famous Sycamore Gap tree garnered global attention. With cameras not allowed in court, Nick Lewis's sketches of proceedings were used by many media, including the BBC. How did he do it? The two-week trial that gripped the nation was Nick's first foray into the law became a regular visitor to courtroom one at Newcastle Crown Court as prosecutors proved Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers illegally felled the sycamore tree that had stood in a dip on Hadrian's Wall for more than 100 sketches the 50-year-old made of the defendants in the dock, barristers and judge quickly became invaluable to journalists reporting on the trial and for the vast majority of the public was the first time they had seen the accused pair's faces."It was fascinating," Nick, a senior lecturer in illustration at the University of Sunderland, says. Under strictly enforced rules, people are not permitted to take photographs in courts, to do so can and has led to provide illustration for articles and news reports, sketch artists are often deployed, but they are not actually allowed to make their drawings in the have to dash out of the building and rely on their memory to produce their work for the baying media mobs. "In a world where everything is photographed, it's very rare that you have a situation where you can only rely on a drawing," Nick says."In the world of news that is instant and visual all the time, it makes it very challenging and interesting."Nick illustrated the case since the very earliest hearings, making him one of the first to capture a likeness of Carruthers, who like Graham, attended early proceedings wearing a mask totally obscuring his face. "It was very difficult, there was nobody who had any pictures online of him at the time, so I had to draw him without any references," Nick says of on the press benches, Nick made notes about people's features, recording details such as overbites and cheekbones, any similarities to celebrities perhaps, before leaving court and heading to a nearby cafe or library where he could draw in started with a quick sketch, using pencil and paper, before moving to his iPad, with each work taking about an hour and a half to produce."At first it was nerve-wracking, I wasn't sure what the procedures were, but the court staff were so helpful so by the end of the case, I got used to it," he says. He had always had an interest in court art and wanted to see if it was something he was actually able to chose the Sycamore Gap trial because it had huge public interest."Everyone I spoke to was horrified about what happened to the tree."But, while not downplaying the seriousness of it, there were no victims or grieving families for Nick to have to think from the drama of the trial itself, Nick also got to experience the court process."It was fascinating seeing the level of rigour and the way people are treated by the staff, who were courteous and having to manage all the parties going in and out," Nick says. The barristers in their black gowns and wigs were also of interest to Nick, the decorum and court behaviours they demonstrated being a big departure from the outside world."When I first started they all looked like the [late] Queen in my drawings," he says. "It took me a few goes before I realised what I was doing wrong."Although they all wear wigs they wear them differently, some down over their forehead, others pushed back, and recognising that made the difference." There are responsibilities to covering court though, Nick says. "You have to be mindful that having to go to court is a pivotal point of someone's life."You have to make sure you are doing something in the public interest without making theatre of it."He attended most days of the trial and was constantly revisiting early sketches, easily done on the iPad, to make were technical issues, his stylus pen stopped working and his iPad ran out of battery, while trying to capture a person's likeness is "incredibly difficult", Nick says. Especially, he adds, if you are doing it from notes and memory and, if there are any reference photos of them, they are probably from different angles than the one you want."Sometimes the more you draw someone, the worse it gets," he says. "But you can endlessly tweak on an iPad."One of the biggest problems is just leaving it alone."He is also conscious that these are real subjects, adding: "I don't want people seeing drawings of themselves and thinking I made them look awful or 'too old'." Now Nick is hoping his dalliance with court artistry will inspire other budding artists among his course is already brimming with all kinds of illustrations, from the medical industry to computer games, and he can now add crime and court art to his is also looking forward to returning to court in the future to sketch more trials, lecture schedule allowing. Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Send your story ideas here.
STV News
22-05-2025
- STV News
Driver caused death of woman knocked down metres away from fatal crash
A driver who knocked down and killed a woman metres away from another fatal collision has been ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work. Anthony Burke, 60, struck Gloria Graham, 64, on Glasgow city centre's Elmbank Street on February 2, 2023. The mum-of-two crossed the road at a junction and was hit by Burke's Volkswagen Tiguan while he made a turn onto the road. The incident was witnessed by emergency crews who were at the scene attending to another crash. Ms Graham was taken to hospital but died a month later on March 1, 2023. First offender Burke pleaded guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to causing Ms Graham's death by careless driving. The supermarket worker was disqualified from driving for 12 months and put under supervision for one year at sentencing. Sheriff Louise Arrol, KC said: 'The collision investigator says that she was clearly visible, but you failed to observe her. 'She suffered a serious injury and was unresponsive. 'The court expresses its remorse to Ms Graham's friends and family. 'I should make it clear that the sentence imposed is in absolutely no way equal to her tragic loss of life.' The court earlier heard that Burke was travelling home after volunteering to help refugees at the Millennium Hotel. CCTV showed a number of police vans and ambulances with flashing lights at the other fatal incident. It is believed that Ms Graham was on her route home to nearby Argyle Street when she spoke to a police officer. The footage saw Ms Graham cross the road and walk towards the pavement. She then crossed Elmbank Street, which she walked on for almost five seconds. Burke did a turn into Elmbank Street while Ms Graham was crossing. Prosecutor Kathleen O'Donnell said: 'He braked to slow the vehicle through the manoeuvre but did not stop. 'Ms Graham was struck by the car and came to rest on the road then the vehicle stopped.' Police officers, an off-duty GP and a paramedic raced from the other scene to Ms Graham's aid. She was found to have suffered a bleeding head injury and was taken by ambulance to hospital. Ms Graham also sustained rib and pelvic fractures as well as a wound to her lung. Her cause of death was found to be 'bronchopneumonia due to traumatic brain injury due to road traffic collision'. A collision investigation found that Burke had 'sufficient time' to see Ms Graham on the road and come to a stop. It was stated that Burke, of Giffnock, East Renfrewshire, was driving between ten to 15 miles per hour but speed was 'not an issue' for the collision. Michael Lyons, defending, told the sentencing: 'I recognise this was an utterly tragic case. 'Mr Bruke has asked me to express in open court his sincere apologies and condolences to Miss Graham's friends and family.' The other fatal case nearby involved Akbar Razaq, who struck pedestrian Chinenye Okonkwo. Razaq mounted the pavement while travelling at 60mph in a 30mph zone. Ms Okonkwo, 33, from Nigeria, was pronounced dead at the scene. Lord Mulholland told the High Court in Glasgow her death was an 'utter tragedy'. Razaq, 29, was remanded in custody after he admitted a charge of causing death by dangerous driving Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Telegraph
20-05-2025
- Telegraph
‘They're like humans': Why we grieve the loss of a special tree
This is a fairy tale about trees. It has good knights and shadowy rogues and great gnarly oaks and elms of Olde England. But it is a modern story, so there's also conceptual art, existential environmental angst, and, of course, the double-edged sword of social media. My search for the source of our national obsession with trees begins in the North of England, under the noisy kittiwakes of Tyne Bridge, as two men go into the dock at Newcastle Crown Court. The trial of Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers, the two men accused of felling the Sycamore Gap tree – an historic landmark of northern England – was set to be a spectacle. These unlikely criminal masterminds had triggered the rage of a nation. I attended the first two days of the trial, as the jury was selected and sworn in and the prosecution opened its case – with Richard Wright KC railing against the pair's 'moronic mission' to fell the 200-year-old sycamore next to Hadrian's Wall in 2023 – and couldn't help feeling that the whole affair was rather sad and surreal. Here were two individuals, found guilty a fortnight later, that might face jail time when they are sentenced in July. It would be the first time anyone has received a custodial sentence in Britain for tree felling. But, of course, this was no ordinary tree, this was a symbol. But of what? Locals in Newcastle had plenty to say about the case, but only on assurance of anonymity. That tree is a tricky subject about which to sit on the fence. Film of the felling was shown, and the judge repeatedly counselled jury members to recuse themselves if they felt too emotionally distraught. The man next to me in the public gallery told me he had proposed to his wife at Sycamore Gap. But outside of the courtroom, responses were nuanced. 'Locals hardly thought about the tree until it was gone,' said one man, adding that they only got angry when others got angry on X and Facebook. One Newcastle business owner thought that the response was absurd. 'We need to keep it in perspective. It's had more press than the murder of a local teenage girl,' she claimed. 'But I don't want a brick through my window for being a tree hater.' Tree haters and tree huggers: have trees now become another part of our polarised discourse? Could there be an element of virtue signalling to this outpouring of grief? 'Tree people are good people,' observes artist Nancy Cadogan whose Lost Trees series of paintings (which go on view at the Garden Museum in London this June), memorialise some 20 felled trees. The last in the series features Sycamore Gap. 'This project started to germinate back in 2022 as a result of HS2 felling trees within my area. I was struck by an extraordinary intensity of emotion and grief surrounding the felling of the trees, and a feeling of powerlessness that accompanied this,' says Cadogan. 'I then realised that the felling of trees affects people in communities around the country, in both urban and rural areas and wanted to explore the effects of that in my work.' The result is a series of stylised and elegiac landscapes. Cadogan's project is just one of several current art projects that highlight the importance of our trees. But it was ever thus. It seems that our emotional attachment to trees is firmly rooted in Britain's cultural output: trees feature in our poetry, prose and television shows. They provide the scaffolding to the verse of Shakespeare, Hardy, Larkin and Longfellow and stand proud in the paintings of Constable, Turner and Palmer. The villains in this arboreal fairy tale fit into three camps. There are the 'morons' like Graham and Carruthers, who cut down trees on a whim or a grudge. Then there are councils who, some critics claim, are chopping down trees at the same rate they are monetising – and littering – our pavements with forests of e-bikes. Finally, there is the classic malefactor: the greedy property developer. Historically, cutting down trees was an act of war. Caesar destroyed the sacred oaks of the Druids and, in more recent times, Israeli settlers have targeted Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank. 'It has reached a crescendo,' stated a spokesperson for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation in 2010. 'What might look like ad hoc violence is actually a tool the settlers are using to push back Palestinian farmers from their own land.' Today, in Britain, the motives behind tree vandalism are often unclear. Having pleaded not guilty, Graham and Carruthers failed to explain their actions. Similarly, the felling by the Toby Carvery restaurant chain of a 500-year-old oak at Whitewebbs Park in Enfield this spring has left everyone confused. Was the tree dead, as Toby Carvery has claimed, or alive as the council insists? Investigations continue. While cutting down any unsightly, unwanted or inconveniently-placed tree is unlikely to see you in a Crown Court, the Northumberland sycamore was exceptional. Not only well known, and eminently photogenic – Instagrammable, we might say – it was supposedly worth the extraordinarily specific sum of £622,191. It was valued using the Capital Asset Value for Amenity Trees (CAVAT) system, which is the recognised methodology for assigning a monetary figure to a tree in a public space. (It is distinct from Tree Preservation Orders, or TPOs, which are often cited in development disputes.) The metrics by which CAVAT arrives at its magic number are, arguably, somewhat subjective. A tree is judged on its health, age, crown size and, less scientifically quantifiable, its contribution to public welfare. The most expensive tree in Britain is in Berkeley Square – known as the Berkeley Plane – with a reported value of £750,000. A tree's fame, location and owner all play a part. It's a class system for trees and the truth is that we value some more than others. To address this disparity, the Woodland Trust launched a Charter for Trees, Woods and People in 2017. Some 70 organisations and 300 community groups collected more than 60,000 stories, delving into what people love about their local trees. From these, a set of principles was formed, including planting for the future, making trees accessible to all and protecting irreplaceable specimens. While the Woodland Trust, along with the National Trust and English Heritage, does much to educate the public about the beauty and wellbeing of the nation's woodland there is also the Downton Abbey factor. Downton did for towering oaks what Eastenders does for cockney pubs. Heritage television broadcasts sweeping vistas of sculpted parks and arboretums into our living rooms. Location scouts seek out atmospheric forests, coppices and thickets: they provide the perfect backdrop for moody meetings and passionate trysts. And their moment in the limelight – the Sycamore Gap's cameo in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is another example – is well deserved and telling: the stately homes of Britain are the custodians of much of the nation's ancient woodland. 'I recognise how important trees are to everyone's existence,' says Dave Cullum, the parks and gardens manager for Boughton Estate in Northamptonshire, seat of the 10th Duke of Buccleuch. Cullum is responsible for the 'pretty stuff' surrounding the house – nicknamed 'The English Versailles' – including most of the 'veteran' trees and a network of tree-lined avenues that link to some 2,500 acres of woodland. The avenues have been devastated by Dutch elm disease, but Cullum is gradually reintroducing elms, as well as planting poplars and lime trees. The estate's trees are much loved by the Montagu family, who have owned the property since the 17 th century. 'They're amazing custodians,' says Cullum. 'If it were purely financial, you'd probably not provide the care that we give to some of the trees; you'd probably just cut the tree down and start again. But we obviously recognise the importance of maintaining that backbone. They harbour everything – memory and ecology – they connect to each other.' The Boughton estate works with the Rural Crime Team, a dedicated section of the British police force, as well as government bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England, to safeguard the trees and other elements of the landscape. So, does Cullum have his favourite trees on the estate? 'There are some, but don't tell the others. In particular, we have a fantastic oak that sits in an area we call Weekley Park. Not only does it carry great age, it has a magnificent crown structure. It defines itself.' Cullum also likes a small, knotty field maple – 'almost a hollow stem' – that sits quietly at the edge of the garden. 'No one really takes it in, but it has its own merit,' he says. And there are many more. 'I've been here for 22 years and I couldn't leave them. That's how it becomes, it gets you. You become a little bit like one of the elves from Lord of the Rings.' Of course, Britain is not alone in its love of trees. 'In every country there should be laws that protect trees,' says Giuseppe Penone, the Italian conceptual artist whose tree-related retrospective, Thoughts in the Roots, is on view at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Penone says we should take a leaf out of The White Goddess, Robert Graves' famous book on myth-making: 'He says that the decadence of humanity began when the penalty for cutting down a tree was no longer capital punishment.' For half a century, Penone has created sculptures and installations that riff on the fluidity of trees, an obsession dating back to his youth growing up in the mountains of Italy. 'I remember a hollow thousand-year-old chestnut tree, which you could access from a small opening and several children could fit inside,' he tells me. 'It was a constant stimulus for the imagination of our games.' Penone's show coincides with the inauguration of the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion, A Capsule in Time, by the Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, which features a semi-mature Ginkgo tree at its heart. The gallery has security in place to contend with vandals. In Nordic countries, trees are a part of daily life. Disagreements about trees are the most common conflict between neighbours in Norway, observes Lars Mytting, the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood: The guide to chopping, stacking and drying wood the Scandinavian way. 'We have several rules that try to lower the tension, but they come up very often. One of the rules is that if a third of your tree could fall onto the neighbour's ground if felled, you can be forced to cut the top of the tree.' Mytting visited Sycamore Gap during an author tour to a bookshop in Corbridge. 'The felling must be one of the crudest, most stupid and culturally sadistic acts I ever have heard about,' he tells me. 'I guess we are so connected to trees because they are a bit like humans – alive, individual, stout but also fragile – and because they can outlive us by many generations.' Scandinavians largely consider trees as agricultural features rather than emotional trigger points. 'However, one tree of great significance was the 'Royal Birch' in Molde on the west coast of Norway, where a famous photo was taken of King Haakon and Prince Olav in 1940 before they went on the ship to London. That became an emblem of our wartime resistance. But, in 1981, stupid vandals almost managed to cut it down and the tree did not survive.' A new birch was planted by King Olav in 1982, Mytting tells me, but that later fell during a storm. 'And so we planted another, which is still there,' says Mytting. 'I guess you have to do the same with the Sycamore Gap Tree. It may be another tree but it will still be the Sycamore Gap Tree.' All fairy tales need sages. Enter, from woodland right, two of our national treasures. In 2017, Dame Judi Dench explained her adoration of trees in a BBC documentary. 'My life now is trees and Champagne,' she said. Michael Morpurgo, the beloved author of War Horse, is equally enamoured. In 2023, Morpurgo published My Heart Was a Tree, a collection of tree-related poems and stories. 'Every day that I can, I go for a walk in the bluebell woods behind our house,' he writes in the introduction. 'I know every one of the trees I pass. They hear me coming, they listen to me. I listen to them, to the whisper of them, the roaring of them, the creaking of them.' At his house in the heart of Devon, Morpurgo takes me on a tour of the trees in his garden: vigorous camellias, a mulberry, a large Bramley apple tree. Over their canopies, one can see the crest of Dartmoor. 'We notice them more than any other flower, they're always there,' Morpurgo says. 'They age like us, they wrinkle like us, they fall to pieces like us.' In the mid-1970s, Michael and his wife Clare founded Farms for City Children, a charity based in a local Victorian manor and a nearby farm, which introduces youngsters from urban environments to country ways. 'We've done a lot of planting of trees down on the farm. It's a work task which we've indulged in for the last 50 years when the kids come down,' says Morpurgo. 'Because we want them to feel that what they do will live on.' Morpurgo's friend and Devon neighbour, the late poet laureate Ted Hughes, equated trees with kin in his poem My Own True Family. The poem delivers a warning from the trees themselves: Hughes' theme of nature's reproach proved prophetic. Trees have become a totem for issues surrounding the climate crisis. They are often seen as the answer. 'Trees change everything,' says MIT Professor Sheila Kennedy, whose TREE FORM project is showcased at this year's Venice Biennale of Architecture. It proposes the use of branching tree forks in the building industry rather than relying on carbon-intensive materials, in the same way that chefs champion 'whole animal butchery'. A composition of branching trees, says Kennedy, 'can create new spaces for working, gathering and living that benefit people, forests and the spaces that each inhabits.' Kennedy also suggests that living trees might one day be incorporated into the structure of buildings, where they could provide 'oxygen, shade, wellness and inspiration, if they have generous access to sunlight, soil and water,' she says. 'There's a long history of using trees to support building structures, so it's fascinating to imagine an architecture of living trees and maybe one that cooperates with sustainable harvested branching trees.' There is a view that trees are becoming secular icons of worship. 'I think they always have been,' says Morpurgo. 'It's interesting how we get taken back to our earlier times. Down here there is a great tradition of carvings in churches of the Green Man [a pagan tree person and symbol of fertility which also appeared on the invitation to King Charles' coronation]. It's a growing person and a tree talking together and becoming one. It's the whole business of our shared life on this planet. Trees are an emblem for that. In a way, they've been the polar bear or the elephant of how we see our local nature.' A seismic, but much needed, shift has occurred in attitudes towards trees, says Morpurgo. 'That all trees are doing some good to us on this planet has been a late realisation amongst us all.' And perhaps that recognition – one that requires constant reinforcement – is as close as we will get to a fairy tale ending to this story.
