Oak as a commercial crop in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

Summary The main period of the exploitation of the Atlantic oakwoods lasted from around 1700 –1900, and was intense only from 1750–1850, though it had been preceded by a long period of anthropogenic interference of which medieval boatbuilding at least had the potential to alter the character of the woods. The Irish were pioneers when they began to search the coast from the Solway to the Great Glen for fresh supplies of oak bark for their tanning industry, and early in the 18th century this involved an attempt to buy large swathes of Argyll oakwoods, and also to create iron works at Glen Kinglas to utilise local charcoal. This failed, but by mid-century English ironmasters had followed them at Bunawe and Craleckan, works ambitious enough to draw fuel from most of the area within reach of the sea, and this led to greater care being taken of the woods involving the exclusion of stock, systematic rotational coppicing and apparently species selection in favour of oak. Management for tanbark by Scots to supply ...