Sunart Forest – Glenmore - Strontian Forest District
The map was recovered from shed at Newton that acted as a storage area for Forest Research who used the maps to locate forest and tree experiments in the field.
In 1973 a portion of the land (over 1300ha) in the Glenmore Farm area all then owned by General Accident (the Insurance company) was bought by the Forestry Commission. The area generally ran northwards from above Glenmore Farm Manager’s House (just visible as a square building on the bottom of the map – occupied then by John Maxwell and family) almost all the way across the Ardnamurchan peninsular to Ockle. Deer fencing the southern half of the area started around the summer of 1974 or 1975 by the Salen squad and ploughing with mounted tines and trail ploughs very shortly afterwards. The site had a complex mix of harder ridges, deep peat zones and peaty gleys of varying fertility hence the very detailed planting pattern. Ploughmen as recalled included Bob MacBeath, Jock Banks, Jocky Thomson, Ian Balloch with Donnie Junor and either Jackie Macdonald or Dougie Kennedy on the deep draining plough. Over several years they worked their way up as far as Loch Mudle where a forestry road had been constructed to enable access for work teams. Initially diesel fuel was taken out onto locations on the hill in 45 gallon drums by the soft terrain ability tracked Muskeg which also distributed the hundreds of thousands trees for the Salen planting squad working there. Unfortunately this was still the era when South Coastal and Inland Lodgepole pines (SLP and ILP) were still in favour. The former tended to grow well, too well with bent stems and rough branches that in later years fell over whereas the latter variety, a well shaped tree, suffered from exposure and faded away over a decade or so. Mixture planting of north coastal Lodgepole pines with Sitka spruce had yet to take off generally in the Conservancy but Sitka spruce was almost always targeted wherever Molina grass showed up in the heath land vegetation even in sparse quantities. By 1978 and 1979 Fred Millwood had taken over as Forester from Norman Davidson and completed the second phase management of the fencing and planting in Glenmore by 1982. In later years circa 2010 a large fire swept through the middle of the planted forest and burnt a major portion of the area.
In time the Forestry Commission sold the Glenmore Forest to private owners in 1994 and General Accident had by or around this time also sold all its farm land. However this was not before they had exhibited a wildlife and conservation themed timber constructed visitor centre at the Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988. Following the end of the festival the whole building and its contents were dismantled and re-erected as a visitor centre at Glenmore below the public road opposite the farm mangers house. Michael Macgregor, wildlife ranger on the estate, and his wife Karen managed the facility in those early days and in time eventually took it over.
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Groups: Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas, Sunart Ardgour and Morven