Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers drove through a storm for 30 miles in the middle of the night to the Northumberland landmark, where one of them cut down the sycamore with a chainsaw and the other filmed it.
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Newcastle Crown Court heard the pair then kept a wedge of the trunk as a trophy and spent the next day “revelling” in news reports about their “moronic mission”.

Prosecutors said the “odd couple” who did everything together had thought it would be “a bit of a laugh”, but realised they “weren’t the big men they thought they were” when they saw the public outrage they had caused by committing “the arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery”.

On Friday, groundworker Graham, 39, and mechanic Carruthers, 32, were each found guilty of two counts of criminal damage – one to the much-photographed tree and and one to Hadrian’s Wall, which was damaged when the sycamore fell on it.

There was no visible reaction from either in the dock as the jury returned after just over five hours to convict them of causing £622,191 of criminal damage to the tree and £1,144 of damage to the wall.

https://news.stv.tv/world/two-former-friends-found-guilty-of-cutting-down-world-famous-sycamore-gap-tree

Eviction grudge may have been motive for Sycamore Gap felling

Daniel Graham, who has been found guilty alongside Adam Carruthers, was facing removal from a plot that neighbours dubbed a ‘shanty town’
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Newly uncovered planning documents have suggested one possible motive for Graham to carry out the “arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery”, as prosecutors called it.

The documents revealed that at the time of the felling, Graham was facing eviction over environmental issues following a long-running dispute with the council, and his neighbours.

In 2015, Graham purchased a small plot of farmland in Grinsdale Bridge near the quiet Cumbrian village of Kirkandrews-on-Eden.

He quickly established a number of buildings on the property and gained planning permission for a stable block, horse shelter and storage units.

However, locals complained when Graham moved a caravan onto the site shortly afterwards, and began living and working there permanently.

Over several years, he developed the land, which he named Millbeck Stables, into a makeshift “shanty town”, from which he ran his business, DM Graham Groundworks, a company that lists tree clearance among its services.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/09/sycamore-gap-vandal-previously-accused-destroy-countryside/