We now know who felled the Sycamore Gap tree and the sentences they received. But it is still a mystery as to who planted the iconic tree in the first place. Or is it? Now there is some speculation that the person who planted the beautiful sycamore might have been quite a famous son of Northumbria.
It is thought that the person who planted the tree may have been none other than John Clayton.
John Clayton
John Clayton (1792-1890) was a lawyer, antiquarian and most famously the town clerk of Newcastle upon Tyne. Crucially for our story, he is also known to have contributed to excavating and protecting Hadrian’s Wall. It is said that this part of his life has often been overlooked, but “without him we could have lost much of this transnational World Heritage Site. Frances McIntosh, Curator of Roman Collections at English Heritage, introduces the man who saved Hadrian’s Wall.
“John Clayton was four years old, when his father bought the mansion house of Chesters which had the Roman fort of Cilurnum in its front garden. This was to stimulate a life-long interest in the young John Clayton. When he died in 1890 he owned five forts… and the section where Sycamore Gap is found.”
Clayton was also a close associate of Richard Grainger, who was the man behind the rebuilding of what was then the Newcastle town centre in the 1830s in what has been described as the Tyneside Classical style. This can of course still be seen on Grey Street, voted the best street in the country in by BBC Radio 4 listeners, Grainger Street named after Richard Grainger, and of course Clayton Street.
How did John Clayton ‘save’ Hadrian’s Wall?
John Clayton used a significant part of his wealth to buy land which contained Hadrian’s Wall along with its forts, turrets, and milecastles. Indeed, it has been noted that one of his obituary’s states: “Whenever an estate came into the market having on it some portion of the Wall, he strove to become its possessor”. This was to have a fortuitous effect in that the Wall would be protected,
To this end, it is said that, “by purchasing these sites he brought them under his protection. He stopped quarrying near to the Wall, forbade the use of Roman stone for new buildings, and moved buildings away from the archaeology. The farmhouse you see today when you visit Housesteads was built by Clayton to replace the one based around the south gate of the fort”
However, there is a darker side to this story, as a distant relative of Clayton, London bookseller Richard Atkinson, discovered that the family of Clayton’s maternal grandmother Bridget Atkinson, owned slave plantations in Jamaica for many generations. It is clear where a considerable proportion of Clayton’s wealth came from.
John Clayton and the Sycamore Gap tree
It was reported soon after the sentencing of the two men found guilty of felling the Sycamore Gap tree that there was speculation that John Clayton may have planted the tree himself. It was argued that timings fit, as the tree was estimated to be about 150 years old, so would have been planted around the time Clayton owned that section of Hadrian’s Wall.
Indeed, McIntosh is reported as saying that it “probably sprouted” in Clayton’s lifetime.
McIntosh commented: “Whether he would have planted something so close to the wall, we don’t know. Sycamores are prolific self-seeders. However, he was interested in gardening and would possibly have become interested in it as an iconic view of the wall.”
Meanwhile, a distant relative of Clayton, London book publisher Richard Atkinson, said that, “it’s conceivable he may have dug the hole and planted the seedling, or it was done by his order, but it’s also quite possibly serendipity of the wind.”
So, there is no firm proof that Clayton did in fact plant the famous Sycamore Gap tree. He did however help to preserve the important middle section of Hadrian’s Wall, for future generations, including our own, even if some of this family wealth did come from originally form profits from slave plantations in the West Indies.
Indeed, it would perhaps be ironic if such a wonderful and iconic symbol of the – North East had been planted by somebody who owned the land where it grew, through his family connections to a trade that was generally rejected in the North East.
So while we know who it was that sadly felled the beautiful tree, perhaps we will never know for certain who it was that planted it.
