A year on from its brutal destruction, an artist’s tribute to the Sycamore Gap tree

Last week we visited Kurt Jackson’s newly-opened exhibition Oak at The Base at Greenham, where the artist considers the beloved tree’s place in our ecology, landscape, history, social narratives, literature and culture. This week we celebrate another much-loved tree, marking a year since the Sycamore Gap tree, which once stood in a dip next to Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, was brutally hacked down, causing an outpouring of national grief. Anna Dillon set about to paint the tree. She called it The Sentinel and the work was bought in May this year. However, prints are now available to buy and as the artist says: “It lives on in so many creative ways.”

@newburytoday has often featured Anna Dillon’s paintings of the Ridgeway and Berkshire Downs, plus her talks and walks with drone photographer Hedley Thorne. Her studio is just over the county border in Aston Tirrold.

“In December 2019, my husband Guy and I fulfilled a lifetime’s ambition to visit and walk various sections of the Hadrian’s Wall National Trail.

As a landscape artist, I was particularly excited to walk the section where the Sycamore tree grew in the famous gap.

This tree, in its famous setting, was iconic and unique.

We started our walk over a very thick ground frost and mist but as the mist slowly lifted, I got my first glimpse of the crown of the tree as we looked down, and over, the canopy.

Despite this being early morning, there was already a crowd of people down by the trunk of the tree and we joined them by scrambling down the step hill to photograph, touch and stare at this majestic king of trees.

My experience of this tree explains why, on September 29, 2023, while listening to the radio, I was to learn of its fate in what transpired to be a deliberate act of environmental vandalism.

I knew I had to paint it and quickly found all my photos of this day, back in 2019.

The painting was finished in the spring of 2024 and featured in my Oxfordshire Artweeks open studio.

It’s called The Sentinel and although the painting is now sold, signed limited edition giclee prints are available if you email me from my website at www.annadillon.com”

Born in Wallingford, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) Anna lives and works in Aston Tirrold which is right at the foot of the Berkshire Downs. Visit http://www.annadillon.com/berkshire.html to view her Berkshire series of pictures that includes The Holies and Streatley Warren, Lowbury Hill, Aldworth and the Lambourn Downs.