East Flanders Moss, Perthshire, a documentary study

Abstract

ABSTRACT East Flanders Moss is now the largest raised mire in Britain and enjoys statutory protection as a National Nature Reserve. Until the eighteenth century it had been exploited mainly for peat and for hunting by the occupants of surrounding settlements; pasture was of limited value. However, by the early eighteenth century improved roads and the consequent availability of lime encouraged legal demarcation of property rights and clearance for agriculture. The broad trajectory of clearance is similar to that of many other British wetlands but detailed archival evidence illuminates the particularities of the local schemes, particularly the reasons for the diverse choices of technologies of clearance which are compared with those used elsewhere. In the nineteenth century clearance slowed and stopped in response to falling land values and other, more remunerative uses for available capital; drainage preparatory to clearance had dried the moss surface which was then exploited for sport shooting. In spite of recent efforts to raise the water-table, birch encroachment, associated with the drainage of a moss which was virtually treeless in the 1790s, remains a significant threat to the ecology.