Badanloch plantations — Helmsdale forest
Courtesy of North Highland Forest District, Golspie.
Two small FC plantations in part of Badanloch Estate which were planted in 1965 and 1966 with mainly Lodgepole pine. There are however some small areas of Sitka spruce and also LP/SS mixtures in 1965 (Plantation 1) whereas in 1966, Omorika spruce was used in the mixture instead of Sitka spruce. It would appear that in this period foresters were thinking about using mixed species on these lower nutrient sites and trialling the concept of mixing other species with Lodgepole pine.
Note that the hundred series of numbers start here in P65 and P66 with Compartments 101-109. The sequence then moved to Achentoul Compartments 110-115 P68, P70&71 and lastly to Suisgill Compartments 117-119 which may have been P71 but not marked.
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), LP (Lodgepole pine) etc; different species areas in each compartment had to be separated by a dotted black line (in this case a solid black line which became standard); 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.
Download Large Version (3.5MB)
Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas