Portlethen Moss holds
an important place in respect to our local and natural history and,
additionally, was an important strategic landmark in respect to the
geography of the area, particularly in the years before there were any
proper roads and settlements around.
I’m not going to
pretend to be an expert on the subject of the “Moss” because people more
qualified than me have already written on this subject in great detail.
In fact the next section entitled “Moss Facts” has been shamelessly copied
word for word from the Wikipedia website and a lot of you will already
be familiar with the information held there. Additionally there is
another local website dedicated to the conservation and upkeep of the
Moss where the latest news and initiatives are listed on a regular
basis. The website can be found on my links page.
However, here I’ll make an
attempt at introducing a few snippets of extra information in relation
to the history of the moss.
Having lived in the
area for nearly half a century I can remember the time when Portlethen
Moss covered over twice the area that it does today. I also remember
when there was only a handful of houses or crofts spread around the
periphery of the moss. Today it’s hard to believe that the houses from
the west part of Broomfield Road, towards the Boswell estate, alongside
Muirend Road, down Rowanbank Road, towards The Square and all points in
between used to be one large, boggy wilderness where the only habitation
was that of animals, birdlife and the amphibians found in the ponds.
Anyone visiting Portlethen today for the first time in forty years would not
recognise the place.
I don’t deny that I
was very surprised when the housing estates began to encroach on the
moss in the 1970’s; apparently building technology had developed to the
extent that these houses would not suffer from dampness in the future.
Over thirty years later and I’ve never heard or read of any complaints
about these houses suffering from the effects of the moss that they are
sitting on.
So what did Portlethen
Moss offer apart from a natural barrier to would-be invaders in the
early years and a good habitat for a variety of wildlife? The main
benefit to the local population was fuel, in the way of peat. This was
cultivated on a regular basis, both here and on the moor at Findon Ness,
and was particularly useful to the villagers in the coastal villages,
not only as fuel for their fires but as a vital ingredient which was
needed to smoke their fish (See Finnan Haddie section).
The next question you
might want to ask is; what is Peat?
Peat is vegetable matter which has been partially
carbonized due to the way in which it decomposes and over long periods
of time, peat deposits have the potential to evolve into coal. Moss is
one of the primary components of peat, although it may also contain
other plant matter such as grasses, shrubs, trees and roots. In
addition, peat often contains decomposing material of animal origin. In
order to form peat, conditions must be wet, acidic, and cold. As a
result, peat develops most often in bogs and marshes, which are wet with
poor drainage.
The cold and acidity keep decomposition rates slow and it
can take hundreds or thousands of years for a peat deposit to build up,
as layers of new plant material grow on top of layers of decomposing
peat. The highly acidic conditions of peat bogs can have a preservative
effect and human and animal remains have sometimes been discovered in
bogs with their features remarkably intact, although I can’t recall any
finds of this nature in Portlethen Moss.
There are a number of uses for peat, although the two
primary uses are as a type of fuel and as a fertilizer. Nowadays many
countries exploit and sell their peat resources, especially Finland,
Ireland, and ourselves in Scotland. In these nations, blocks of peat are
readily available as a fuel source, and peat is also sold in less
compacted form for gardeners.
When peat mining was at its peak at Portlethen Moss in
the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the
local people weren’t looking at exploiting and exporting this valuable
resource, instead they used it for their own needs around the home.
When peat cutting was at its peak at Portlethen Moss in
the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the local people weren’t looking at
exploiting and exporting this valuable resource, instead they used it
locally for their own needs, although there was an option of carting
some peats to Aberdeen where there was some profit to be made. Each
villager, as part of his monthly rental that was paid to the local
landowner, had an entitlement to cut peat from Portlethen Moss or Findon
Moor, dependant on whom that landlord was or where they stayed. As well
as paying for their houses the villagers had to pay small nominal costs
for other extras such as the use of peat from the bogs or kelp from the
shores and these were recorded in the Accounts that the factor kept on
behalf of the landowner.
How much peat can you get out of a bog? Let’s have a look
at some of the statistics produced by Mr. George Robertson who performed
and wrote an agricultural survey for the county of Kincardineshire in
1810 and do a bit of calculation based on his initial figures.
The moss could be stated at eight feet in thickness on
average – from that we will assume a depth of six feet of peat.. Each
peat in its humid state may be around the size of a building brick,
approximately nine inches long, four and a half inches broad and two and
a quarter inches thick. From these dimensions there would be 512 peats
in a cubic yard. That’s as far as Mr Robertson took his calculation but
on that basis I estimate that within a one acre tract of land based on
these averages then you should be able to extract around 5 million
pieces of peat!
It’s a mystery as to what happened to these peat cutting
rights over the years, in fact some people in the older houses in
Portlethen or Findon may have copies of old title deeds which shows them
that previous householders were entitled to cut peat, even up to quite
recent times. I guess the only people who truly know the answer to this
question are the original landowners and the building companies that the
land was sold to. Now the true facts are probably lost in the mists of
time.
The final little titbit of information I can add to the
story of Portlethen Moss is one that many of you won’t know about and is
covered in the section entitled “Portlethen for Sale!” In the early
1800’s the estate of Portlethen was for sale and one of the selling
points was the “fact” that it was very likely that Portlethen Moss had a
rich seam of coal! It would appear that estate agents were alive and
kicking in the early 19th century and were using every ploy
that they could think off to sell off the land. The intervening two
hundred years have passed without the discovery of any significant
amounts of coal so it’s probably safe to say that there are no rich coal
veins buried within the moss or within the housing estates that are now
built there.
Note: All photographs on this page taken within
Portlethen Moss in October 2009. |