Golticlay Plantation Map - Rumster Forest
Courtesy of North Highland Forest District, Golspie. (Open PDF and enlarge to see detail)Photographed by Norman Davidson.
The map shows the extent of the planting in Golticlay Plantation around 1966. Some of the nearest compartments next to the main road are planted but the more distant areas have been compartmented and surveyed but at time of mapping not planted. The numbering seems to carry on from Rumster main forest starting at 54 and working up to 75 with some other proposed numbers in pencil however some numbers are missing and may be in another forest area in a map now lost. The planting extends from P63 up to P66 and may even include some P67 after which the mapping system may have changed.
There are some interesting points and annotations on this map. The compartment rides are no longer in grid iron lay out and some rides follow what could be main access routes; the Lodgepole pine species symbol (PC) has a suffix (c) to indicate most likely coastal provenance seed. There is one note to say that a Terrace provenance seed is being used in one compartment (north BC Canada on the Skeena River); other notes indicate the actual seed origins from North America; occasional notes to indicate use of double and single mould board ploughs; also on boundaries some names of neighbouring farmers who would possibly share the cost of fence maintenance or to call in the event of sighting of fires.
Lodgepole pine is extensively used most likely on all the deep peat area but it is worth noting that Sitka spruce was used where the soils were better and the peat shallower and also used in intimate mixture with Lodgepole pine in some compartments. Interestingly in compartment 75 Omorica spruce is used in mixture. Going by the yellow boundary line it is possible another piece of land was purchased next to the original Golticlay acquisition.
Following acquisition (or long term lease) of a piece of land it was mapped with a boundary, measured and handed over to the local head forester to manage. After fencing his main task was the division of the area into ‘compartments’ by laying out and surveying compartment boundaries called ‘rides’. In the days of chain and compass it was very convenient to set the rides out on a grid iron fashion using a compass which made area measurement very simple. Ground preparation and planting of the tree crop followed thereafter leaving the 20-30 foot wide rides as open strips for access.
As usual with a national organisation there was a code and procedure convention for mapping of plantations some of which survive in the FC to this day. Acquisition boundaries were edged with a yellow ink; compartment boundaries (rides) drawn in red ink; the extent of the planting in any year was given a light colour wash, outlined in green ink and the planting year written in green eg P.66; the compartment’s serial number and area in acres was written within the compartment sometimes within a small circle; the areas where different tree species were planted within each compartment were annotated with a species code eg SS (Sitka spruce), PC (Pinus contorta) etc; different species areas in each compartment had to be separated by a dotted black line; internal fences, streams and other land usually indicated by a solid black line. Map scale was usually 6 inches to the mile.
Note that the annual reporting year and the planting year coincided at this time in that they ran from 1st Oct to 30th Sep. This avoided having an artificial split in the totals for the planting season which ran from November through to May. The Planting Year (PY or just P) was fixed as the first summer following planting and thus trees planted in Nov 55 and May 56 were both annotated P56.
Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas