Graeme Peacock is a Northumbrian landscape photographer. Clients include the National Trust, English Heritage and Northumberland National Park Authority
In the early hours of 28 September 2023, a sycamore tree was ignominiously felled in Northumberland. Being around 200 years old, it was not a particularly venerable specimen. And, compared with the widespread destruction of natural habitat during the construction of HS2, its demise might be seen as rather trivial. For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t even a ‘native’ tree!
And yet… The loss of this particular tree matters very much to an awful lot of people, including me. Its felling unleashed a tsunami of anger and incomprehension in the UK and abroad; it prompted a major police forensic investigation; it provoked heartfelt eulogies in a Book of Remembrance set up by Northumberland National Park Authority. All this for the loss of a single sycamore tree.