AFTER centuries guarding one of the entrances to Exeter, a cedar tree – thought to be the oldest in the city – has succumbed to disease.
Standing sentinel at Gallows' Corner in Sidmouth Road the 60ft tree took more than a week to fell.
Resident John Pullen said the landmark would be missed.
"I have lived across the road from the tree for 40-odd years," he said. Everything that lives has to die sometime but I am sad to see it go."
Jamie White, tree surgeon with RJM Forestry, said there was no choice but to fell the damaged tree.
"A large split had developed in the back of the trunk and I think it will mostly go as firewood as it is not in very good condition, although some of the larger pieces may be suitable for making into something," he said.
"We have had to use the largest blade we have for the saw to deal with it."
Felling the tree and removing the stump has taken around nine days. It is thought that, while people were never actually hanged on the tree, growing close to the gallows, it was used for the hanging of the skeletons of those who had been executed as a warning to others as they entered the city.
The gallows in Heavitree were used for executions in the 17th and throughout the 18th century. Crimes listed for those executed there include wife poisoning, poisoning one's master, witchcraft, murder of a customs house officer, highway robbery, horse theft, arson, house breaking, stealing sheep, forgery, rape and robbing a postboy.
On August 25, 1682, Temperance Lloyd, 32, Mary Tremble, 27, and Susannah Edwards, 21, were hung for witchcraft.
The execution in Heavitree, which caused a stir throughout the country, took place only two years before the last recorded execution for witchcraft in the UK, when Alice Molland also went to the gallows in Heavitree in 1685.
The deaths of Temperance Lloyd, Mary Tremble and Susannah Edwards became part of English folklore.