Forestry on the Orkney Island of Hoy
An article courtesy of Mike Phillips who describes his experiences in an article which he first published in Scottish Forestry in 1999. The photograph shows the Old Man of Hoy which Mike saw on his trip north.
He writes:
‘‘In the seemingly far off days of 1954, a series of four pilot plots were established by the Forestry Commission Research Branch in the northern part of the Island of Hoy, in order to determine the possibility of larger scale forestry. I was responsible for the establishment of the plots, mostly with local assistance, and this account is, in effect, a historical record, largely unconnected with the silvicultural aspect and its success or otherwise. The latter are in the annals of the Forestry Commission Research Branch’’.
The attached PDF gives the full version of the article in which a number of people are mentioned. They are:
lain Cameron
Angus MacDonald
David Spence
Jack Spence
Jack Davidson
John Zehetmyer
John Zehetmyer in a follow up article published in Scottish Forestry commented -
‘‘Reading Mike Phillips notes on the Hoy planting in 1954 took me back to one of the most memorable periods of my research and indeed Forestry Commission (FC) career. The background to these experiments was an offer of several thousand acres of land from the owner of Hoy Lodge Estate, a Mr Stewart. An Acquisition Officer duly reported substantial areas as ‘plantable’ but Conservator North, Director Scotland and Silvculturalist North all had grave doubts on grounds of exposure’’.
‘‘In 1952 there was a Danish Orcadian Conference based in Kirkwall which I attended with Michael Edwards and gave the paper (Zehetmayr. 1953) to which Mike Phillips refers. On route we visited Mr Scarth’s estate at Binscarth and from him learned of his grandfather’s use of Tatter flags to site the house. Within a couple of years we had Tatter flags from Yorkshire to Shetland to try to measure or at least scale exposure.
On that visit we picked four or five areas graded for soil and exposure - by guesstimate no flags yet - and in due course three were acquired. Conservator North, James Fraser, didn’t like deep peat and omitted Lyrawa, in our opinion the most sheltered or least exposed site.
So before setting off to plough in 1953, I got James MacDonald (Director, Research) to agree that if we could get the tackle on to the deep peat we should plough at least a token plot. Some time later it came back to me that my name was mud in acquisition circles for ploughing an area they had not acquired. A Nelsonian blind eye and a thick skin is usfu1 sometimes and in Research we got away with deeds which might have blighted a Conservancv Officer’s career for good.
In 1953 we had taken with us via Aberdeen and Stromness some two miles of sheep and rabbit fencing which was erected round the four plots over the winter 1953/54 by Jack Spence of Bu Farm. I had wrongly ordered 10 ft corner posts but Jack Spence rose to the challenge. When Angus MacDonald and I arrived for the planting he was on the last plot. We found his son, a lad of about 10, laying out stabs four at a time clad in just shirt and trousers but no sign of Jack. Then a spade emerged from the heather: he was digging the corner post 5 ft in by hand!’’
Groups: Forest Research, Forestry in Action