The tree stood for nearly 150 years before the two men carried out what a prosecutor called a “moronic mission” and cut it down in the middle of the night.

Two men who cut down England’s iconic Sycamore Gap tree were sentenced to prison. The tree stood for nearly 150 years near Hadrian’s Wall.

LONDON — With one man holding a phone to record the tree’s notorious fall and the other working a chainsaw, a pair of vandals forever altered the landscape of a beloved section of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England. In less than three minutes, the beloved Sycamore Gap tree that had stood nearly 150 years crashed to the ground.