48 pieces · NaturePhoto by Peter Gladwin on Unsplash (Unsplash License). Hadrian's Wall running along the Whin Sill crags in Northumberland National Park, on the walk to Sycamore Gap — the landscape around the regrowing stump, not a close-up of the tree itself.
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Sycamore Gap Grows Back, Three Years On
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Sycamore Gap Grows Back, Three Years On
The Sycamore Gap tree stood in a dip along Hadrian's Wall near Crag Lough in Northumberland — a hollow carved by glacial meltwater, which is exactly why a single sycamore sitting in it became one of the most photographed trees in England and an emblem of the North East. It was about 150 years old. It picked up a second name, the Robin Hood tree, from a scene in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and it won the Woodland Trust's England Tree of the Year award in 2016. In 2023 vandals cut it down. What arborists noticed at the time was that the chainsaw had left a clean cut, and a clean cut on a healthy stump with deep established roots is not necessarily the end of a tree.
Three years on, it isn't. New aerial images released around the anniversary in late September 2026 show the stump ringed with basal shoots standing two to three feet tall, and the National Trust describes the regrowth as flourishing. Andrew Poad, the Trust's general manager at Hadrian's Wall, credited the specific measures taken on the site — reducing soil compaction around the roots and limiting human disturbance — along with the care visitors have taken in keeping their distance. The tree's legacy has been spreading in parallel: 49 saplings grown from its own seed have been distributed to communities across the UK. Biologists reckon it could take something like 150 years for the stump to reach anything resembling its former size, but that walkers might be sitting in its shade again within a decade.
The photograph is the walk to Sycamore Gap rather than the stump: Hadrian's Wall itself running along the Whin Sill crags under a wide spring sky. That makes for a jigsaw with one dominant structure and three awkward fields. Build the wall first — it is a hard, continuous diagonal running from the lower centre into the distance, and the pieces carrying its stonework are unmistakable. The dark crag face falling away to the right is the next anchor, with its rock, scree and dead bracken giving plenty of texture. Then it gets harder. The upper half is almost entirely clear blue sky with only a wisp of cloud at the top right, so leave it for the end and sort purely by how the blue darkens toward the top of the frame. The grassland is the sneaky one: it looks like a single green, but it is really three — bright cropped turf on the left, pale bleached grass along the ridge path, and the flat farmed fields on the right separated by a fence line you can follow like a seam.
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Frequently asked questions
- Is the Sycamore Gap tree actually growing back?
- The stump is. Three years after the tree was illegally felled in 2023, new aerial images released around the late-September 2026 anniversary show a thick ring of basal shoots that have reached two to three feet tall, which the National Trust has described as flourishing. The original trunk is gone and is not coming back, but the root system survived and is pushing up new growth.
- Why did the stump survive at all?
- Two reasons. The chainsaw left a clean cut rather than a shattered one, which arborists suggested at the time might allow the tree to regrow, and sycamores readily send up basal shoots from an established root system. Site management has helped as well: the National Trust has reduced soil compaction around the roots and limited human disturbance, and has credited visitors keeping their distance as part of why the regrowth is going well.
- How long until it looks like a tree again?
- Longer than a lifetime for full recovery, but not for shade. Biologists estimate it could take on the order of 150 years for the stump to regrow to something like the size of the tree that was felled, while walkers could plausibly be sitting under its branches again within about a decade. Separately, 49 saplings grown from the original tree's seed have been distributed to communities across the UK.
- Does this photograph show the tree?
- No — and it could not, because the tree is no longer standing. It is Hadrian's Wall running along the Whin Sill crags in Northumberland National Park, on the walk to Sycamore Gap, showing the landscape the stump sits in rather than the stump itself. We publish only openly licensed images, and this one is used under the Unsplash License with the photographer credited beneath the picture.