Hallowed Turf? From Ritual to Restoration
Walk up on to the high ground on Dartmoor at any time of year and the going gets more difficult with each squelchy footfall. Standing in this open landscape surrounded by miles of blanket bog, thoughts turn to the people of the past and what brought them here. In many cases it seems to have been the peat. This material is made up of layer upon layer of partially decomposed sphagnum moss and one of its qualities is the ability to retain water. Traversing this wet mass is very difficult for humans and animals and it is why a number of peat passes have been constructed over time to allow access to more remote areas.
Watery landscapes have been valued and exploited by humans for thousands of years. Dartmoor’s world-renowned archaeological sites, Bronze-Age stone circles and stone rows, and the well-known White Horse Hill burial cist, are situated within the peat, and the entire upland is a prehistoric landscape containing subtle remnants of past human activity. More prosaically, peat has been cut and dried for hundreds of years to keep hearths burning across the moor and beyond, preserving life and warming homes against the harsh winters. It was used extensively in the Dartmoor tin industry; turned into charcoal, it burned as fiercely as any coal and remarkably it was even exported to Cornwall, when Cornish tin miners recognised its excellent quality! For more information on the peat cutters and the uses of peat, see Tim Sandles’ article on his website: Legendary Dartmoor.
Fast forward to the present day and the blanket peat is valued for very different reasons. Digging peat for fuel is no longer allowed and the water that falls on Dartmoor is ultimately our drinking water. Increasing awareness of climate change has turned the international spotlight on peat uplands for their ability to store carbon, and since 2015 the South West Peatland Partnership has carried out work on high Dartmoor to restore areas of degraded peat, with the aim of ensuring that it can fulfil the function of holding water and storing carbon into the future. Therein lies a problem - how do we safeguard the wildness and remoteness of Dartmoor and at the same time carry out work with heavy equipment in remote areas of formerly untouched blanket peat? How do we plan for work that must be carried out within delicate ecosystems and world-renowned archaeological landscapes, and how do we know the extent of the degraded peat or the best way to identify and conserve damaged areas?
By Caya Edwards, The Dartmoor Society