Unique Local History Project

The Greatest Change in the Scottish Landscape Since the Clearances

The 5-year Whitelee Forest Oral History Project came to an end recently with the launch by Provost Stephanie Young of Ruth Tittensor's new book about the Whitelee Plateau, where Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire meet.

"From Peat Bog to Conifer Forest: An Oral History of Whitelee, its Community and Landscape" tells how local people transformed the desolate peat-moorland of the secluded Whitelee Plateau into a 15,000-acre conifer forest in the second half of the twentieth century. This well-illustrated book is based on recorded and written memories of 60 people, 11 of them from Newmilns. Their memories are now stored for posterity on CDs and as attractive, illustrated booklets. Copies are archived in the

National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where anyone may use them.

In 1960, the Whitelee Plateau - a remote upland between Newmilns, Strathaven, Eaglesham, Fenwick and Galston - was devoid of trees. It was 'quaking-bog' moorland, without public roads, where hardy sheep and small cattle, black and red grouse lived out their lives, tended by hard-working farm families. Whitelee was a wet, windy, misty, dangerous wilderness of heather, rushes and bright-green bog moss forming enticing patches covering open water. However, by the end of the twentieth century, it had been converted into a dark-green blanket of 10 million conifer trees, some ready to be harvested and made into roof timbers, paper or wood chips.

People's remarkable stories start before the Second World War and vividly describe how families farmed and survived in this indescribably-awful place. Many shepherds

tramped across their lands daily, to check their Blackface flocks, even in rain or snow; blue-grey cattle lived out on the moors all year, with just a little hay added to their winter diet. All members of farm families were needed for work on the farms, even before and after school.

Round the perimeter of the Plateau, conditions were a bit better and farmers could keep small milking-herds of Ayrshire cattle and grow some potatoes, turnips and oats on small patches of enclosed inbye. Families on and around Whitelee Plateau dug peat for winter fires, picked wild plants for food, and collected laundry-baskets'-full of gulls' eggs in May for baking. Life was tough.

Then, in 1961, the Forestry Commission, which had been charged by the government to expand Britain's forests very rapidly, came along and showed interest in buying Whitelee land to start a new forest. During the next thirty years, over twenty local farmers sold their very worst land for forestry. The new finances were welcome, giving them the chance to diversify their businesses or perhaps retire.

Their stories relate how farmers used their collie dogs to help drive the sheep and cattle off the sold moorland, then to market or other farms. The Forestry Commission took over the now-empty lands. Local fencing contractors who worked away up on the Plateau, sometimes in snow, and miles from any road, were engaged to enclose what would become young forest.

Tough young chaps joined the new forest squad: their first task was to dig long drains in the peat, using heavy hand tools. Skilled tractor drivers ploughed the soggy peat - producing a corrugated effect on which little spruce trees could be planted. In the next three decades, some of the squad planted one million trees each. Five steadings and their inbye were turned into Forest Workers' Holdings which could be rented by squad members as smallholdings.

There are stories of tractors sinking out of sight into the quaking peat, of the back-breaking task of planting a thousand or more treelets each day, of winter work making rubber fire-beaters - and of forest fires. The grouse, lapwings, curlews and gulls soon disappeared when the new trees grew upwards, and so egg-collecting had to stop.

The wonderful 360 degree views from the Plateau gradually disappeared, to be replaced by restrictive tunnel vision along the narrow access rides between ever-taller trees. But many people, particularly naturalists, loved the new, dark, remoteness, noted many new bird species, saw mosses growing into huge hummocks and studied the lichens: all these benefited from the growing shelter which had been absent for hundreds of years. Roe deer and foxes found the dark forest a quiet haven; flocks of feral sheep maintained themselves for many years without being discovered.

Forestry started at Whitelee as a mainly manual skill, but was becoming dominated by huge machines by the time Whitelee Forest was complete in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, farming had also mechanised, shepherd numbers had declined and local people had to find new recreational activities, faced with forest not moorland.

People who were involved or watching from the local villages and towns remembered vividly what they saw and the changes in their own lives.

The greening of the Whitelee Plateau was part of the greatest change in the Scottish landscape since the Clearances: the increase in woodland and forest cover from a mere 6% in 1960 to a staggering 17% by 2000.

This story is the first ever account of the experiences of the workers who together wrought this change. They were some of those who planted trees on 11% of Scotland,

in only 40 years. This unique account of an episode now receding into history is profusely illustrated with old and modern photographs, maps and tables.

In due coursed, we hope to raise enough finance to prepare copies of all the CDs and booklets for archiving in the new Burns Monument Centre in Kilmarnock, where they will be easily accessible to residents of Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire.

The book is available from Darvel resident Ruth Tittensor (coordinator of the Whitelee project and author of the book) Tel: 01560-320543 Email: ruth@johnwalters.com OR

Packard Publishing, Forum House, Stirling Road, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 7DN Tel: 01243-537977 Email: info@packardpublishing.co.uk

http://www.packardpublishing.com/index.shtml

Price £25.00 if collected, £4.45 extra for postage.