Do trees hold up walls or damage them?

[Arbre]

Got an old stone wall on a site in France with a tree growing pretty much out of it. Hopefully the pictures show the situation. The customer wants the whole tree taken out but I'm worried the wall might fail sometime afterwards - what do you guys think?

[Arbre]

Pic from the other angle....

 

The wall is all the way along, just covered in Ivy and climbers in some parts.

 

As you can see some bits of the wall have fallen already where it looks like Ivy stems have pushed the wall out.

[Arbre]

Also can any one id the tree? The customer had already chopped a couple of stems off!

[Arbre]

leaves....

[treebloke]

Looks very much like a Ash tree to me and yes it will most likely damage the wall and probably all ready has, having said that the wall looks a bit suspect anyway.

[treesrus]

leaves....

 

and you may find the roots are not substantially in the ground enough to hold the tree up as it puts on weight.

[Perkins]

Ash tree.

Land gradually moves downhill, so dry stone walls built accross the hill will need rebuilding now and again. Walls built up/down the hill, less so. The tree will put additional pressure on the wall so best removed IMO.