Kildonan plantations — Helmsdale Forest
Courtesy of North Highland Forest District, Golspie.
These two small areas of land were probably acquired from Kildonan Estate by the Forestry Commission and planting begun in 1962. As the compartment numbers start with No1 it is likely to be the first plantings in what became Helmsdale Forest which existed as a head forester beat until the early 1980s when it was absorbed under reorganisation into the Dornoch Forest District. Willie Cameron was the last Head Forester in charge at the time and retired shortly after the Forests into Forest District restructuring process.
Planted between 1962 and 1964 the species is quite varied with quite large areas of Scots pine but again mainly Lodgepole pine (at this stage named Pinus contorta – PC) or this latter species in mixture with the Scots pine.
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 (662kB)
Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas