Sir Anthony Gormley, the world-famous artist and sculptor who created the Angel of the North, has turned down the opportunity to replace the tree from Sycamore Gap. 

The iconic tree was sadly felled late last month in what authorities have described as a "deliberate act of vandalism."

Gormley, who has a studio in Hexham, read out his words live on Sunday's BBC Radio 4 show, Broadcasting House. 

He wrote: “It stood alone. Perfectly centered in a deep cusp in the passage of Hadrian’s Wall, across the middle of Northumberland. The sycamore of Sycamore Gap stood like a sentinel. The ground falling away behind it allowing it to stand silhouetted against the northern skies, like a watcher.

"So never mind the film, and the world fame that it brought, this tree was already very known and loved locally because of its beauty and steadfastness in the northern gales. A marker in the lie of the land, and a great destination for a walk. I remember so well on a blustery day, walking uphill and down dale, with a gaggle of studio mates to celebrate the completion of a major project. I have a studio nearby in Hexham and we’ve all gone there more than once to mark the end of a big project or a colleague setting off on a new life adventure.

"It’s unusual for a tree to grow on its own like that and it seemed to stand for a certain kind of independence as well as for our own personal relationships with nature. People have suggested that it could be replaced by a sculpture but as Mark Wallinger has pointed out, a sculpture and a tree are very different, and, in most cases, the tree is always preferable.

"A sculpture is a still, silent thing against which the changing light of the day, the seasons of the year and our lives, feelings thoughts, etc. can be registered. But a tree, is a living thing, changing with the seasons. Its annual growth evidenced in the 300 rings that are now displayed across its cut stump. It calls on our fellowship as living beings. As many people have pointed out, we are the least wooded nation in Europe and it could be that the up willing of feeling stems from an unconscious understanding that we have lost an ancient relationship with woodland that began with the enclosures.

"In the wake of the many debates that have followed the sadness and incomprehension of the felling, has arisen the urge to repair, renew and replant. In that urge is an understandable guilt about the parlous state of our woodlands, that sustained Britain’s rural communities for so long.

"Our ancestors depended on foraging and those ancient rites of coppicing, firewood gathering, nut and mushroom gathering that expressed a symbiosis between a community of trees and a community of humans. I agree with Robert McFarlane that the loss of this one tree should encourage respect for the multitude of trees in Britain. The loss of this one tree should be replaced by a concerted, country-wide replanting of native trees.

"Trees are social and the community of the forest is connected by a network of underground fungal mycelia now known fondly as the WoodWide Web. Through the symbiotic intertwining of root hairs and the hyphae of the mycelium, trees help each other and we can help them.

"If the tree experts are right, the tree at Sycamore Gap will sprout again and this singular tree will become multiple. I take this as a positive sign for a necessary regeneration both of the tree and our relationship with all trees.”