Forestry Memories

Shin Forest — Achany and Invershin areas

Maps courtesy of North Highland Forest District, Golspie and photographed by Norman Davidson.

This part of Shin Forest was acquired by the Forestry Commission from Skibo and also Achany Estates in 1949 extending up the west side of the River Shin from The Kyle and Linsidemore up to Ferry Wood but excluded a large area of farm land around Achany which was at one time managed by the Department of Agriculture. The first of the new planting was down in the Invershin and Linsidemore sections (Skibo acquisition up to roughly Shin Falls) of the forest starting at Compartment No1 next to the Kyle of Sutherland and thereafter working northwards west of the River Shin through the woods of Achany, Gruids, Braemore and Raemore except for Linside Wood (Comp 20-33: P53-P54) and back again next to the Kyle and Altass(Comp 111-122: P57-P58). Much of the land was planted between 1950 and 1958 and extended to Ferry Wood next to the Loch Shin dam, Compartment No 125.

The planting map shows a very wide and detailed tree species choice with small areas of one species quickly changing to other species as one assumes reflecting very varied soil conditions. The individual areas of Scots and Lodgepole pine, Sitka and Norway spruce, Douglas fir, Western Hemlock (Tsg), European and Japanese larch are almost too small to discern but collectively add up to a large forest unit.

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.46; 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. Scale was normally 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.

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Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas

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