The popular Lion Rock landmark was destroyed by excavations by the owner of the property, it was revealed yesterday.

Readers sent The Royal Gazette photographs that showed Lion Rock being demolished when a barge equipped with a crane excavated the coastline at Harrington Sound.

Wendell Hollis, a former resident who grew up on the property, said: “It’s not a loss to my family, it’s a loss to Bermuda, and it all seems totally unnecessary.”

The destruction of the waterside feature was spotted by Mr Hollis and his friends on Sunday.

He said: “We were in tears when we saw what had happened.”

The property, on former farmland once owned by Mr Hollis’s grandfather, is now owned by architects David and Georgia Benevides, with the excavation work believed to have taken place last month.

Mr Benevides could not be contacted for comment yesterday and it remained unclear if planning permission, which is required for foreshore work, had been granted to remove Lion Rock.

Mr Hollis said: “It appears in all the 19th and early 20th-century guidebooks of Bermuda and in some of the sought-after collectible coffee table pictorial books of Bermuda’s treasured spots.

“For this to be destroyed without public outcry would paint Bermuda and Bermudians as heartless souls who care little about the image that we project and the values that we are supposed to hold sacred.”

Members of the public who contacted The Royal Gazette said other areas of the coast had been blighted by development.

Mr Hollis, who claimed he knew Harrington Sound’s shores well enough to draw a map from memory, said he could see areas where “people have probably pushed the envelope farther than they should have”.

He added: “I wouldn’t say there’s anything really offensive. They are all pretty much in scale with the properties, and even this, if not for the value of Lion Rock, is not bad, but why destroy it?

“There is surely a difference between a legal entitlement and a moral duty.

“Some would say it’s just a rock. It is now, but prior to September 13, it was so much more.”

Former government conservation officer David Wingate said he was familiar with Lion Rock.

He added that planning permission would “absolutely” be required for excavation to the shoreline and promised to alert environmental watchdog Bermuda Environment Sustainability Taskforce.

BEST said yesterday that it was investigating.

Dr Wingate added: “Our big problem today is that we have such powerful machinery that things can be carried out in a matter of minutes and nothing can be done. We are victims of our own massive machines.”

Local residents who contacted the property owners said they had been met with a wall of silence.

Lion Rock was well known to older Bermudians and even featured on postcards.

William E.S. Zuill, in his book Bermuda Journey, called it “a curious formation which bears a resemblance the king of beasts”.

The 1946 publication continued: “All carriage drivers appreciate this freak of nature and never fail to point it out to tourists.”

Mr Hollis said: “People who don’t know about it might not understand, but it is blatant, callous destruction of something maybe not so known in recent years, but that historically was something of significant importance.”