An iconic group of trees made famous in the HBO show Game of Thrones are in danger of being cut down for being “potentially dangerous”.

The tunnel of beech trees are found in Armony, County Antrim in Northern Ireland and they remain a popular tourist destination for fans of the series.

But as reported by the Coleraine Chronicle, a recently commissioned report has recommended that eleven of the trees should be cut down, while one of them has already died.

The Department of Infrastructure and Tree Survey have issued the warning, describing the trees as “potentially dangerous and structurally compromised.” Some of the trees are protected by local government, meaning the Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council may have the final say on the trees’ future.

The trees are part of the cluster known as Dark Hedges, which were planted in 1775, with roughly 80 currently surviving. Rob McCallion from the Save the Dark Hedges campaign group said: “If they don’t do something over these trees, someone is going to be killed, because of the state they’re in.”

The trees featured most famously in ‘The North Remembers’, which was Season 2, Episode 1 of Game of Thrones. In the episode, Arya Stark escapes from King’s Landing, disguised as a boy. As a result, the site serves as a stop on the daily Game of Thrones tours in Northern Ireland.

In other Game of Thrones news, the saga’s author George R.R. Martin recently was one of a group of writers to sue the makers of ChatGPT for “systematic theft on a mass scale”. The complaint was that the AI program was using their copyrighted work without legal permission.

Brian Cox also recently revealed that the reason he turned down the offer to play the character Robert Baratheon on the show was because the money was not good enough and that the character was due to be killed off too quickly.

In August, Darren Kent, who played Goatherd in the Season Four finale of Game of Thrones, died at the age of 36.