The Largest Section of the Beloved Sycamore Gap Tree Is Going on Display in England
The iconic tree was illegally chopped down in September 2023, but its memory will live on in the form of a new art installation that invites visitors to touch—and even embrace—a piece of its trunk
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A section of Britain’s beloved Sycamore Gap tree—which was illegally chopped down in 2023—is going on display.
Starting this month, visitors can see, touch and even hug part of the iconic tree at The Sill: National Landscape Discovery Center, reports CNN’s Amarachi Orie. The venue is located in Northumberland National Park in northern England, roughly two miles from where the Sycamore Gap tree stood.
Quick fact: Where was the Sycamore Gap tree?
The famous tree stood near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, which was built by the Roman army starting in around 122 C.E.
The largest piece of the salvaged Sycamore Gap tree trunk is the focal point of the center’s new permanent exhibition, titled “Sycamore Gap: Coming Home.” The six-foot-tall section is positioned upright, as it stood in life, and surrounded by benches and curved pieces of wood inscribed with words and phrases like “old friend” and “from this land.” The messages came from public submissions.
“This was the people’s tree and so from the start, we knew there had to be a public-led response,” says Tony Gates, chief executive of the Northumberland National Park Authority, in a statement. “The original tree may be gone in the form we knew it, but its legacy remains, and what has come since has been endlessly positive, affirming our belief that people, nature and place cannot be separated and are interdependent.”
Charlie Whinney, an artist who specializes in using steam to bend pieces of wood to make furnishings and sculptures, was selected to create the installation. Working with the legendary tree was nerve-racking because “so many people care about it,” Whinney tells BBC News’ Alison Freeman. “You don’t want to mess it up.”
Since he started crafting the memorial in mid-June, he’s been “blown away by how huggable [the trunk] is,” he adds.
“The actual design came from what people said,” he tells the broadcaster. “They wanted to be able to sit down, so we made some benches, and also pretty much 100 percent of the people we spoke to said they want to be able to access the tree and touch it.”
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In September 2023, the world awoke to the news that someone had deliberately felled the Sycamore Gap tree with a chainsaw. Standing alone in a dip along Hadrian’s Wall, the 200-year-old specimen was one of the most photographed trees in all of the United Kingdom and was a popular site for marriage proposals. It appeared in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and was crowned “English tree of the year” in 2016 by the conservation charity Woodland Trust.
“It’s part of our collective soul,” Jamie Driscoll, mayor of the North of Tyne Combined Authority, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) at the time.
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Fans of the tree were devastated. Tributes began pouring in, with letters, drawings and messages arriving at The Sill: National Landscape Discovery Center. The venue became “a place of celebration and memory” for the tree, according to the statement.
“I treasure memories of walking up that rough, steep path to see this open-armed wonder of a tree, lit by bright blue skies, a patchy shade for sandwiches and a home to so many creatures,” wrote one individual in a visitor book at The Sill, per the New York Times’ Jenny Gross.
Meanwhile, police were hard at work investigating the crime. In April 2024, prosecutors charged two men from Cumbria, England: 38-year-old Daniel Graham and 31-year-old Adam Carruthers. At the men’s trial in May 2025, prosecutors described the crime as “mindless thuggery” committed for a “bit of a laugh.”
A jury convicted them on two counts each of criminal damage. Graham and Carruthers, who have maintained their innocence, are scheduled to be sentenced on July 15, per BBC News.
In addition to saving part of the trunk for public display, arborists also saved some of the Sycamore Gap tree’s seeds. Some have now sprouted into saplings, which officials are calling “trees of hope” and distributing for planting across the U.K.
“Sycamore Gap: Coming Home” is on view at The Sill: National Landscape Discovery Center in England.
