Hand drawn map Millbuie Forest, Black Isle
Maps are courtesy of Inverness, Ross and Skye Forest District and show the forest area originally part of Millbuie Forest and then Culloden Forest and then all amalgamated into Culloden Forest District. See large image for actual map.
This beautiful hand drawn and well used map is likely to have been used by the Head Forester or Head Foresters over a long period, possibly exceeding 25 years. As each planting year ended all the details of the compartments planted, species and other details would have been carefully added. The green boundary which normally surrounded the extent of each year’s planning area and annotated with large text announcing the Planting Year, also in green ink, is almost completely faded away but re-inked in dark colours here and there. There are little notes on species mixtures, fire belts, bulldozed roads, FWH (Forest Worker Holding) areas, nurseries and other obscure and almost faded markings denoting important issues now also faded from memory.
This map would have been open, closed and reopened thousands of times over the years and is indeed a silent witness and recorder to countless thousands hours of work by forest worker and forester in the process of making this one forest. Whole working lives would have in some cases have been spent in this forest.
There would have been thousands of stories of incidents, gatherings, loss, laughs, changes, great deeds, misdeeds and many other happenings. Would that a few were added to this record!