Have faith in the noble hawthorn. Hawthorns are well noted for their ability to regrow following serious pruning.
Hedge laying relies on cutting the tree/bush near ground level to form a hinge, laying the trunk sideways (and weaving into a living fence) so that it can grow afresh from the base.
Cutting branches off at a high level is likely to see it growing as a pollard rather than a coppice, but hawthorns have a proven record of regrowth following damage, whether natural or deliberate.
A small amount of reading (and earlier in the thread) tells me that this tree is not the original, but grown from a cutting of the original. There also seem to be trees grown from other cuttings, which apart from their specific location are just as legitimate cloned offspring as the one in the news. They could even try to root the cutting taken to decorate the Queen's Christmas table.
Quack!
Geoff the Duck.
(p.s. Suibhne. Since you started using your current "guest" sign in, I always misread it. Despite all I tell my brain, it still always reads it as Suibhne Ashtray.)