What happened to all the trees?

The landscape of Galloway is generally rather bare, although sizeable areas are covered by modern forestry plantations. So, what happened to all the old native trees?

Historian Sir Herbert Maxwell, wrote A History of Dumfries and Galloway, published in 1896. He considered the “crannogs” or fortified settlements in the middle of lochs. These took a lot of timber to construct.

Maxwell wrote [pages 17-19] of the crannogs: “Our knowledge of the mode of life pursued and the degree of civilisation attained by the primitive inhabitants of south-western Scotland would be extremely meagre if it rested on the evidence of such terrestrial remains as have survived the operations of agriculture and the successive replacement of ancient structures by new dwellings occupying the old sites. But during the last thirty years attention has been directed to a class of inhabitants which have been so well preserved by reason of the sites occupied as to remain in much the same condition as when their inhabitants deserted them. The presence, moreover, of articles of Roman manufacture indicate these dwellings were contemporary with the Roman Occupation.

“Antiquitaries knew very little about crannogs or lake-dwellings in Scotland, until the exploration in 1862 of a group of them exposed by the drainage of Dowalton Loch in the parishes of Kirkinner, Sorby, and Glasserton. These have yielded fragments of Roman ware of the kind usually called Samian, and in one instance a large bronze vessel, ornamented with the head of Medusa, and bearing on the handle a Roman maker’s name [Footnote: Found on a crannog in Dowalton in 1863. Now in the National Museum of Antiquitaries, Edinburgh].

“More than a hundred years before the time of Agricola [AD40-93, Roman general who conquered much of Britain] Julius Caesar had described the natives of Britain making use of wooden piles and marshes in their intrenchments. Dr Munro declares his belief that this was a universal practice among the Celts, who brought their knowledge of it in their migration from Central and Southern Europe [Footnote: Lake-Dwellings of Europe. By R. Munro, M.D. London 1890, p 491]. Be this as it may, the interest aroused by the discoveries in Dowalton, following on those in the Swiss lakes, has resulted in finding crannogs prevalent all over Scotland, except in those lakes where natural islets provided ready-mage refuge; and it may be safely assumed that they were in universal use among the Selgovae and Novantae at the time of Agricola’s invasion.

“Certain conclusions may be drawn from their structure as to the aspect of the country, and, from the objects found on them, as to the degree of civilisation attained by the inhabitants, their food, and even their clothing.

“In the first place, the immense of material required to build a crannog, which was a framework of massive oak logs mortised together, filled with huge bundles of brushwood secured by innumerable piles of oak, Scots fir, or ash, and decked with solid oak planking, implies the presence of dense forest in a country subsequently wholly denuded of wood. It was estimated that in building a simple crannog which was exposed on the drainage of Barhapple Loch, a very small sheet of water near Glenluce, upwards of 3000 large trees had been employed, besides those used in the erection of dwellings on the island, and the construction of causeways to the shore, an invariable feature in latchstring habitations. This crannog and the buildings on it had been destroyed by fire, as was shown by several large beams partially burnt. Not only were trees abundant where now there are artificial plantations, but they were of great size. Canoes hollowed out of solid oak-trunks are commonly found near crannogs; for although these islands are connected with the shore by causeways, these are always interrupted at the end farthest from the shore, for the purposes of defence. Five such canoes were found among the Dowalton group, varying in length from 25 to 31 feet. It might seem impossible to find in the whole of Wigtownshire living oaks of equal magnitude to these, unless one bears in mind the methods still employed by primitive boat-builders, who wedge out a tree-stem during the process of hollowing, so as to make the breadth of the boat considerably greater than the original diameter of the trunk.

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