LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Two men found guilty of the “mindless” and “deliberate” felling of one of the UK’s most iconic trees, which sparked national outrage, were on Tuesday jailed for more than four years.

A jury at Newcastle Crown Court found former friends Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, guilty in May of criminal damage for the 2023 felling of the tree at Sycamore Gap.

It had stood for nearly 200 years next to Hadrian’s Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage site in northern England. The tree was so striking that it featured in the 1991 Hollywood film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Sentencing the pair at the same court, Judge Christina Lambert said their actions had involved a “high degree of planning and preparation” and caused widespread “shock and bewilderment”.

For those who lived in the county the tree had become “a landmark, a symbol of the beauty of its untamed landscape”, she said.

Graham and Carruthers each received a sentence of four years and three months.

Both men were convicted on two counts of criminal damage to the sycamore and to the Roman wall, which was damaged when the tree fell on it.

“This iconic tree can never be replaced… it belonged to the people. It was totemic,” said Andrew Poad, a manager with the National Trust conservation charity, in a victim impact statement read to the court.

He said the felling was “beyond comprehension” and had caused “an overwhelming sense of loss and confusion”.

The pair drove to the site near Hexham in Graham’s Range Rover and felled the tree on the night of September 27, 2023, slicing through the trunk with a chainsaw in “a matter of minutes”, prosecutor Richard Wright told an earlier hearing.

“Having completed their moronic mission, the pair got back into the Range Rover and travelled back towards Carlisle”, where they lived, he added.

The pair were jointly charged with causing £622,191 (US$832,821) of criminal damage to the tree and £1,144 of damage to Hadrian’s Wall, an ancient Roman fortification stretching from north-west to north-east England.

The sycamore was a symbol of north-east England and a key attraction photographed by millions of visitors over the years, winning the Woodland Trust’s Tree of the Year in 2016.

Efforts are under way to see if it can be regrown from its stump or seeds.

The National Trust, which owns the wall and the tree, said it has grown 49 saplings from the sycamore’s seeds, which will be planted this winter at sites across the UK.

A more than six-foot (two-metre) piece of the felled tree now forms the centrepiece of an art installation on permanent display at a visitor centre near where it stood.

People can see and touch part of the trunk, and “can once again gather, sit, and reflect”, according to the visitor centre.