A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside. Johnny Scott
of Meikleour and Aldie, and her husband Robert Murray Nairne, who was subsequently killed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, while fighting for the Highland Jacobite cause against Government forces under the Duke of Cumberland. Legend has it that following the death of her husband Jean Mercer would not allow the hedge to be cut, letting it to grow towards the heavens in a tribute to her husband’s memory.
BIRCHES
Our native birches, the silver birch and downy birch, are two of Britain’s most lovely and graceful trees. No highland scene would be complete without these dainty masterpieces of nature growing in broken thickets on rugged hillsides and wild glens, beside thundering waterfalls and raging torrents, mountain tarns and on wind-swept moors.
These silver trees, which thrive on the light, drier soils of the eastern side of the country and the downy birches of the damp western uplands, are beautiful in all seasons. In winter, the twigs of a birch give the impression of a purple mist hanging over the hillside which turns to a glorious haze of yellow and red when the catkins appear in the springtime. The bright freshness of its leaves and their delicate scent are not matched by any other tree, and in summer after rain, when every leaf holds an iridescent crystal at its tip, a birch really becomes the ‘Lady of the Wood’, the name given by the Celts. In autumn the fallen leaves give brightness and a wonderful variety of different colours to the woodland scene and alleviate any feeling of melancholy that trees in the autumn can sometimes provoke.
Hard, heavy, close-grained birch wood made superb charcoal and is among the best of firewoods, burning with a bright, steady flame and a pleasant fragrance. Hams, herrings and haddock smoked over birch twigs or ‘sprays’ acquire a unique flavour from the resinous wood, as did whisky when barrels were made of it. Because of its prevalence and availability in the Highlands, the uses of birch there were many and varied. It was used for all building materials, the handles of agricultural implements and for household items such as bowls, plates and spoons. Cradles were made of birch and there was a thriving cottage industry making hard-wearing bobbins, spools and reels for the Lancashire cotton industry.
The oily bark, which makes the best kindling, was used for tanning leather, and sometimes, when dried, twisted into a rope and soaked in mutton tallow to be used as a substitute for candles. Twigs or sprays were used in thatching, and birch spray, dried through the summer with the leaves on, made an acceptable alternative to heather in a mattress. Besom brooms are still made of birch sprays and the wood is suitable for veneer; birch ply is the strongest and most dimensionally stable plywood used to make skateboards, amongst other things. Birch has a natural resonance that peaks in the high and low frequencies and is the most sought-after wood in the manufacture of speaker cabinets. It is sometimes used as a tone wood for semi-acoustic and acoustic guitars and occasionally for solid-body guitars.
SCOTS PINE
A lone Scots pine tree, bent and twisted by age and ravaged by the weather, standing alone on the edge of a moor or Highland glen, personifies the harshness of the landscape and the struggle that man and beast have had to survive in this unforgiving part of Scotland. There is a recurrent theme in Highland folklore that these lone trees were used to mark burial places of warriors, heroes and chieftains. In areas further south, where the sight of a Scots pine may have been more unusual, they can be seen to mark ancient cairns, trackways or crossroads. In the Lowlands and in England, they were commonly planted to mark not only the drove roads used by the Scots cattle drovers bringing their herds south, but also the perimeters of holdings along the route where the cattle could spend the night.
Scots pine woods were a valuable source of timber; they once covered great areas of the Highlands but they are now restricted to Abernethy, Inshriach, Rothiemurchus and Glenmore Forests near Aviemore, Achnashellach in Wester Ross, Ballochbuie in upper Deeside, Einig Wood in Sutherland, Glen Affric in Invernessshire, Ordiequish in Morayshire and the Black Wood of Rannoch in Perthshire. The high resin content in the sap of Scots pines means the wood is slow to decay, so large numbers of trees were felled for house-and ship-building materials. Straight trees were in demand as spars for the rigging on sailing boats – hence Beinn nan Sparra, Hill of Spars, in Glen Affric. The light, strong wood was ideal for fencing stobs, furniture and deal storage boxes. Later, the wood was in demand for railway sleepers and telegraph poles.
Scots pine made reasonable charcoal and was a vital source of turpentine, rosin and tar. Turpentine was made by cutting a V-shaped notch in a tree and collecting the oleo-resinous gum that ran out. When distilled, oil of turpentine was produced and used in making varnish, oil paints, polish, and as an antiseptic. Rosin, the residue from the distillation process, was used to wax the horsehair strings of violins and other bowed string instruments, for sealing wax, glue, in soap and early printing inks. More recently, powdered rosin is rubbed on the soles of shoes worn by gymnasts, dancers and boxers to improve grip. Crude tar was made from Scots pines by digging a pit on the edge of a raised piece of ground with a pipe running from the bottom to a container. A fire of dried pine cones was built in the pit, and as soon as this was burning well it was fed a supply of small pieces of freshly cut pine wood. The black fluid that trickled down the pipe was wood tar, which made the best weatherproofing for wooden buildings, boats or fishermen’s nets.
Although Scots pine is quick to regenerate if left undisturbed, overcutting to meet timber demands, natural fires, overgrazing by sheep and deer, agricultural reclamations and even deliberate clearances in the Middle Ages to deter wolves have all been factors in the decline of the great woods that once covered 1,500,000 hectares.
The long history of coppicing is the reason why ancient coppice woodlands can be seen as the direct descendants of the original wildwood. It is perhaps strange that coppiced woodland, with a structure that looks least like one’s perception of an ancient natural wood, is biologically closest to it. Virtually no trees were deliberately planted for commercial woodland until the late seventeenth century. There was no need to; the coppice and standard system continued to work perfectly well, and in the north of Scotland the Scots pine woodlands seemed to stretch into infinity. In most woodland, apart from some very localized transplanting of saplings to maintain the coppice crop, any improvements were made by encouraging the more valuable species to fill gaps where old stools had died, or by layering and protecting the natural regeneration.
Unwanted shrubs and invasive species, such as birch, were sometimes removed to favour more desirable trees, but by and large the general pattern of species remained very close to the original natural cover. Even in the late eighteenth century it is recorded that ‘the underwood was not carefully selected and planted; the production of it, both in quantity and quality was, for the most part left to chance’.
There was, however, considerable planting of garden and orchard trees such as apple, pear, fig, sweet chestnut, common walnut and medlar, during the medieval era. Any planting of native trees was not for their timber but to enhance the landscape or to provide cover for game or as covert for foxes, with extensive planting becoming commonplace among wealthy landowners by the late Tudor period.
BRITISH FOREST LAWS
Enclosing common wood pasture to create deer parks, which had been in vogue under the Normans, suffered a decline after the Black Death devastated the country in 1350. There was a revival during the reign of Henry VIII, who created at least seven parks, the largest of which, Hampton Court Chase, enclosed 4,000 hectares of land and four villages, setting a precedent among the aristocracy and prosperous landed merchants. The owners of private deer parks tended to position small woods and clumps of trees to draw the eye to the skyline or other feature, and retained large single trees for the air of antiquity they gave to the landscape. These were practices which were later followed and improved upon by the great landscape designers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The history of