Corrour Forest Stock Map circa 1985
The map was recovered from shed at Newton Nursery which acted as a storage area for Forest Research who used the maps to locate forest and tree experiments in the field.
Corrour Estate was acquired by the Forestry Commission in 1966 and totalled about 17,000ha. This included the plantations at loch Ossian established by Sir John Stirling Maxwell in the late 1890s and estate woodlands between Fersit and Laggan Dam planted in the 1950s. New planting by the Forestry Commission began next to Laggan Dam in 1967 and continued up until 1978 within a large fenced enclosure running from the loch formed by the Laggan dam up to the high ridge half way to Loch Ossian. Much of the tree planting work was carried out by the work team from Strathmashie Forest and indeed Corrour Forest was transferred from Fort William district to Strathmashie (Headed by Jim Ogilvie) probably in the very early 1980s. Corrour may well have come back to Leanachan (Lochaber) when Strathmashie joined up with Glenmore (Queen's Forest).
Initial access was via the track from Fersit but the building of the wide span pre-stressed concrete beam bridge circa 1968 across the channel cut between Loch Laggan and Laggan Dam at Torgulbin changed work order. At this time the FC Roads teams started to construct the forest road from the bridge into Corrour Lodge and enabled planting operations to progress from that location.
The tree species used was generally larch, Sitka spruce (SS) and a large proportion of various provenances of Lodgepole pine including South Coastal (SLP), Inland ( ILP), Skeena (KLP)and Alaskan (ALP). No doubt the ILP provenance just faded away with the exposure and low nutrient conditions. Planting of mixtures such as Sitka spruce and North Coastal Lodgepole pine, had yet to be promoted. Geoff Newsom, Head Forester, based at Torlundy, carried out all the early supervision and planning work for the forest.
The map is an interim working copy probably produced by the Forest Surveys team at the end of their survey of Corrour Forest. The heavy dark line represents the actual owner ship boundary and, hard to spot, the dotted chainline the forest roads also darker where it forms part of a compartment boundary. The small experiment outlined in green is of interest as it shows SS/LP and could be a planted species mixture trial from 1971.
In 1983 the land out with the forest fence, totalling over 13,000ha, including Loch Ossian forest was sold back to Pollock and Corrour Ltd. In 2009 and the Forest of Corrour was sold into private ownership.
Note that there are some close up views of parts of the map in the PDF link below. The large image version link below will be essential for viewing the map detail. You have to left click once into the link image to enlarge the view.