Anyone who has sought shade from them this summer will feel grateful for whoever planted them but unfortunately a small minority are wreaking havoc with a chainsaw. We need no further evidence of that than when the Sycamore Gap was cut down in September last year. The much beloved tree was the site of many wedding proposals, featured in Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and has its own hashtag too.
Advertisement Advertisement Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Lancashire Evening Post, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. The men accused will stand trial in December but the reason it’s made so many headlines is because trees are incredibly emotive; old and established ones especially. The Sycamore Gap bordered the UNESCO world heritage site Hadrian’s Wall and its gnarly branches were believed to be over 300 years old.
That means it was growing when Mozart was born and when the French Revolution started. It’s not just old trees in special places that make headlines though. A woman who illegally cut down a protected tree on her driveway in the West Midlands has been spared a fine despite cutting down a beautiful specimen of Ash.
The tree in Solihull was protected by a tree preservation order that had been in place since the 1990s, but what a lot of people have found frustrating is that the tree existed before the couple’s home was built. Advert.
