Case Study: Dendrochronology and woodland history at Ardura Community Forest, Mull 

Coralie M Mills & Peter Quelch, Dendrochronicle 

Until recently, the Ardura Forest site in Mull was largely a dense Sitka spruce plantation with only a narrow fringe of older oak woodland running below it, alongside the River Lussa (Figure 1). The Mull & Iona Community Trust (MICT) purchased Ardura Forest from Forestry & Land Scotland in 2019, through a grant from the Scottish Land Fund. While MICT’s main objective was restoration of native woodland cover, they also identified social objectives including outdoor education and community well-being. MICT’s interest in the history of the wood was piqued by the many felled oaks lying within the plantation (Figure 2). How old were they? What was the history of the wood before the planting of exotic conifers in the 1960s? How could that longer history inform their mission? 

A Historic Woodland Study (Mills et al 2024) was designed to inform MICT’s work, combining dendrochronology with other field and documentary evidence to reveal the longer history of this wooded landscape. The inter-disciplinary approach combined field observations of the woods and trees with historic map, placename, documentary and tree-ring evidence, providing a chronology and context for changes at the site over the past few hundred years. Drawing on related research by others, including pollen analysis (Mighall et al 2019), early historical documentary evidence (Gilbert 1979; Gilbert pers comm; Munro 1961; Munro & Munro 1986), and archaeological survey (Birch et al 2018; Ellis 2022), the character of the landscape before the lifespan of any of the living or dead trees present was also considered.

The Lussa Valley has been wooded for millennia, the earliest evidence being from the Lussa Floodplain pollen site (Mighall et al 2019), just west of Ardura Community Forest, from a deep peat profile so far only analysed back to about 500BC. The results show a continuously grazed landscape with broadleaf woodland, peatland and wet grassland components throughout the period analysed. Only in the uppermost samples, from the last couple of centuries, does pollen from conifer plantations make an appearance, while the oak pollen record is sparse until these most recent samples. For millennia before that, the woodland had a rich mixture of tree species, predominantly birch, alder and hazel, with oak only a minor component.  

We see from the early documentary evidence that the woodlands on Mull were valuable and possibly managed resources from at least early historic times, and that later on in the medieval period, as documented in the late 14^th century, there is evidence for wooded landscapes being valued as hunting reserves too. 

A review of the historic map evidence showed woodland present at the study site since the earliest available mapping, in Bleau’s seventeenth century atlas (Figure 3) based on late 16^th century mapping by Timothy Pont.  Roy’s mid-18^th century mapping, relied on elsewhere for a pre-improvement era view, did not cover Mull. Some early 19^th century maps gave some useful information but not much about the woodland specifically. The first edition OS six-inch map surveyed in 1879 (Figure 4) shows a dense broadleaf woodland, named Doir a’ Chuilinn. 

The dendrochronological work focussed mostly on oak, given: the dominance now of oak at the site amongst both older living trees and deadwood; its suitability for dendrochronology; and specific questions about the woodland’s history posed by MICT. However, the oldest tree sampled was found to be a living holly (Figure 5), originating around 1733, part of the former wood pasture system (Quelch 2010) which had prevailed in the Lussa Valley for millennia. The significance of holly to traditional pastoral farming (Smout et al 2005, 99) may have influenced the naming of the wood as ‘Doir a’ Chuilinn’, Grove of the Holly, a Gaelic name which would have originated sometime in the medieval period. The holly was located within an extensive old enclosure, interpreted as having had a pastoral use, quite possibly doubling as an overnight droving stance. Tree-ring ageing of an oak growing from its tumbled dyke showed the enclosure had gone out of use by the late 18^th century.  

The woodland lies along the major west-east historic droving route across Mull (Haldane 1952; LeMay & Gardner 2001), with multiple drove routes coalescing just west of the wood before heading through the Lussa valley. There one can see the archaeological remains of the Torness market stances (Birch et al 2018) where horses and probably cattle were traded until around the 1830s (MacKenzie 2002, 28; Caldwell 2018, 103). The people of Mull relied on this droving trade for centuries, most of them living on land best suited to livestock grazing, with the sheltered wood pastures key to that system. Our study demonstrated that a grazed wood pasture system persisted into the late 18^th century, until the acceleration of the clearances alongside agricultural ‘improvements’. These led to significant depopulation of Mull’s indigenous people over the 18^th and 19^th centuries (Currie 2010; Caldwell 2018; MacKenzie 2002) and also caused an abrupt change in the landscape at Doir a’ Chuilinn.  

Our tree-ring evidence revealed that in the early 19^th century oak was widely planted into the old wood pastures and the enclosure, at a time when domestic oak timber and coppice products commanded peak prices. However, most of those planted oaks were never subsequently coppiced or utilised, and as the 19^th century progressed, and the estate changed hands twice, the emphasis shifted to sheep farming and sports shooting. The oak wood remained (Figure 6), alongside vestiges of the earlier wood pastures, until the Forestry Commission acquisition, when many of the old oaks were felled to make way for conifer plantation.  

In relating the Ardura Community Forest study to other case studies in Scotland (eg Mills et al 2009; 2012; Mills & Quelch 2019; Mills et al 2022) it is evident that in much of upland Scotland wood pastures evolved and persisted over millennia through a predominantly pastoral way of life. Such woods were crucial, providing winter shelter to livestock and multiple resources to the people who lived on the land. 

Clearances of people in the ‘improvement’ era saw their small mixed farms replaced by larger sheep farm units and by new tree plantations, often planted directly into those old small farms. These intense changes had massive impacts on people, cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, and on landscapes – including old wood pasture systems like Doir a’Chuilinn. The wood pastures largely went out of use then and were planted into, cleared or grazed away. Surviving examples have their own unique character and biodiversity, and merit greater recognition and protection. 

Such studies also highlight a long-standing dichotomy in the history of Scottish woods between the landowner’s controlling interests in the valuable timber, charcoal and other extractable commercial products and the reliance of much of the rest of the rural population on access to woods for sheltered grazing, fuel and other resources (Stewart 2003; Mills & Crone 2012). Over time, the rural tenantry’s traditional customary access to such resources, rarely enshrined in formal rights, became a contested issue especially in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  

Studies revealing the cultural history of the landscape seem especially important in places like Mull which witnessed such stark depopulation only a few generations ago. Historic Woodland Studies can, of course, inform ecological restoration and conservation management, but equally importantly, by revealing the way the wooded landscape was shaped by people over millennia, they help to re-connect the community with these cultural landscapes and former ways of life.  

This Historic Woodland Study was commissioned by the Mull & Iona Community Trust and funded by Nature Scot, Highlands and Islands Environmental Forum, Fauna and Flora International and Rewilding Britain. The study was assisted by Dendrochronicle colleagues Hamish Darrah and Linda Harkness with generous help from many other quarters including TreeStory, the Mull Museum and individual members of MICT. 

References 

Birch, S, Peteranna, M and Williamson, S 2018 Woodland creation project: Archaeological walkover survey Torosay Hill Estate, Craignure, Isle of Mull, Argyll & Bute. Client report for Torosay Hill Estate/Gordon Brown by West Coast Archaeological Services, April 2018. 

Caldwell, D 2018 Mull and Iona: A historical guide. Edinburgh: Birlinn. 

Currie, J 2010 (2^nd edition) Mull: The island and its people. Edinburgh: Birlinn / John Donald. 

Ellis, C 2022 Ardura Community Forest, archaeological walkover survey, Isle of Mull, Argyll. Client report for Mull & Iona Community Trust. 

Gilbert, JM 1979 Hunting and hunting reserves in medieval Scotland. Edinburgh: John Donald. 

Haldane, A R B 1952 The Drove Roads of Scotland. London & Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. 

LeMay, J & Gardner, J 2001 Glen More, a drive through history. Tobermory: Brown & Whittaker Publishing. 

MacKenzie, A 2002 Island Voices: Traditions of North Mull. Air Bilibh an t-Sluaigh. Edinburgh: Birlinn (2018 paperback edition). 

Mighall, T, Timpany, S & Schofield, JE  2019 Vegetation History on the Torosay Estate, Mull Unpublished client report for Torosay Hills Estate by University of Aberdeen (TM & JES) and University of the Highlands & Islands (ST). 

Mills, CM & Crone, A 2012 ‘Dendrochronological evidence for Scotland’s native timber resources over the last 1000 years’, Scottish Forestry 66, 18-33.  

Mills, CM & Quelch P 2019 Barhill Wood, Kirkcudbright: Historic Woodland Assessment. Client Report for Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership (Can You Dig It archaeology programme). 

Mills, CM, Cook, M & Williamson, C 2022 Galloway Glens. Barhill Wood, Kirkcudbright: Investigations in a historic woodland. Castle Douglas: Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership. 

Mills, CM, Quelch, P & Harkness, L 2024 Ardura Community Forest, Mull: Historic Woodland & Dendrochronology study (V3). Dendrochronicle client report for MICT. 

Mills, CM, Quelch, P & Stewart, M 2009 The evidence of tree forms, tree-rings and documented history around Bealach nam Bo, Loch Katrine.  Client report for FCS (Cowal and Trossachs District). 

Mills CM, Quelch, P & Stewart, M 2012 Historic Woodland case studies for FCS (part of a wider set of case studies): Loch Katrine, Trossachs https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/73-managing-the-historic-environment-case-study/viewdocument  

Munro, RW (ed) 1961 Monro’s Western Isles of Scotland and Genealogies of the Clans 1549. 

Munro, J & Munro, RW (eds) 1986 Acts of the Lords of the Isles, 1336-1493, Scottish History Society 1986 224 [ALI]. 

Quelch, P 2010 ‘Upland wood pastures’, Landscape Archaeology and Ecology 8, 172-177 (End of Tradition Conference Proceedings, Part 2). 

Smout, T C, MacDonald, A R & Watson, F 2005 A history of the native woodlands of Scotland 1500-1920. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 

Stewart, M J 2003 ‘Using the Woods, 1600-1850 (1) The Community Resource and Using the Woods, 1600-1850’ (2) ‘Managing for Profit’, in Smout, T C (ed) People and Woods in Scotland: A History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 

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