This is Scotland, land of peat and moorland. Peat had, and still has a value as a fuel and many areas were divided or 'apportioned' to householders in the district with corner point markers. i was pleasantly surprised the other week to find this 'markstone' within 0.6m of where I had estimated it to be, working off a plan from 1854. Not many of them survive though, peat is no more than a fibrous putty and can be 3 metres deep. The extraction and transporting process must have destroyed most marks.
Here's a portion of the 1854 plan. Looks as if the dot and dash lines might be a 'control' framework of chained compass bearing lines for the initial survey, setting out of all the individual 'apportionments' must have been done from these lines. There's no hint of triangulation anywhere.
With all those long, skinny, crooked parcels, how was a householder to know where he could dig without taking his neighbor's peat?
Nice find, beautiful scenery & clear skies,
it looks as a walk in the park.
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Jim, I think it was all self regulated, the peat cutting season is in spring so everyone would have been there at the same time. As they cut along a single long front and most appear to run parallel with the long sides, the advance towards a boundary would take years. All would have worked well as long as the boundary stones remained in situ and a long line could be sighted through.
We had something similar.?ÿ Wood lots were timber areas where city folk could purchase a small acreage to be their wood supply.?ÿ Long and skinny lots.?ÿ Some were actually surveyed and filed of record.
Nice find, beautiful scenery & clear skies,
it looks as a walk in the park.
It looks like that but the undergrowth is heather and if not managed by burning it grows into a tangled woody mass and smaller plants die off. That??s the ecological wisdom now. Burning still goes on, mainly on grouse shooting sporting estates where there??s a healthy mix of plants, fed by the ash and the light reaching the soil.
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My brother in law?ÿ bought 40 acres adjacent to his other holdings that had been platted as 20 acres plus 20 x 1 acre.?ÿ Each wood lot was 2 rods by 80 rods = 1 acre.?ÿ Few trees are left and it is used as pasture.
Unfortunately, two of the wood lots were taken by the county for back taxes long before he bought the rest of the land over 20 years ago, and that still isn't cleared up so he doesn't have title to them. I keep telling him that it will be a problem down the road.
Nice find!!!?ÿ
Looks like it would take a big survey to figure out lots in that plan.?ÿ
Do the big stones sink into the peat? Like our concrete right of way monuments sometimes will.?ÿ
