Dornoch Forest — Woods near Dornoch
Maps courtesy of North Highland Forest District, Golspie.
Part of rather worn map with missing sections which portrays some of Dornoch Forest plantations. There is enough to show that the first area planted by the Forestry Commission in the forest was Camore Wood where the compartments start at No1 and appear to show that most of the wood was planted in 1928. From the map symbols it is almost certain that the original Camore Wood had been felled sometime previously and even the sawmill location noted. (See PDF for details of the two map sections.)
The compartment sequence carries on to Harriet Plantation planted in 1930- 1932, then on to Skelbo and Balvraid Woods planted 1956 – 1958 and after that the next area of land to be acquired appears to be near Rogart. In the 1960s the woodland areas of Duchess, Countess, Fourpenny, Embo Street and extension to Harriets are added to the Forestry Commission ownership. Interestingly the field areas in front of Embo street still seem to show in original ownership shapes with some acquired by the FC (as Forest Worker Holdings?) prior to the establishment of the tree nursery. Can anyone say when the nursery was formed and who lived in the holdings?
The choice of species is traditional for the location with substantial areas of Scots pine (SP) but Norway spruce (NS) and Sitka spruce (SS) are used in the wetter areas.
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 (in this case green was used); 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; 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