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Local historians and naturalists can find common ground whatever sceptics say. This is shown in a new book published by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. Loynton Moss : a natural and social history of a Staffordshire Nature Reserve is profusely illustrated in full colour and tells the story of an Ice Age kettle hole transformed into a rich and distinctive wetland haven for wildlife. Mike Deegan, the Trusts Reserves Manager, and members of Norbury Local History Group cooperated in the research and writing, and called in Paul Anderton, as an experienced author and local historian, to supervise the project and design the book. Loynton Moss, in the parish of Norbury, bordering on Shropshire, extends over 135 acres and is a deep body of peat accumulated over eight thousand years as the water-filled kettle hole gradually filled up with decaying vegetation. The stages of this process are described by naturalists as natural succession. Called Blakemere, the pool, over 100 acres in the fifteenth century, survived until the 1950s. By then, many other meres and mosses left by melting ice in the northern areas of Staffordshire and Shropshire had disappeared. The wealth of insect and bird life in this distinctive wetland corner of Norbury merited registration in 1968 as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). However, at the sale of the whole area in 1969 the Trust was outbid, but bought 34 acres containing the last vestiges of the mere by private arrangement shortly after. The major part of the Moss, however, was subsequently almost completely destroyed to make it suitable for agriculture. For thirty years the Trust worked hard to preserve the reedbeds and fen land but could not buy the surrounding peatland until 2000. Since that time the Trust has implemented new management plans to recover much more of the wetland habitat and attract back the butterflies, hares and buzzards, for example, driven away by arable farming. The whole site belonged to a large estate in Norbury parish and over centuries its waters played a valuable part in the local farming economy. Members of the Norbury Local History Group (Pam Collard, Tony Browne, Sarah OBoyle and Richard Blacknell), researching the history of the village, and particularly the Loynton estate, revealed the story of the owners of Loynton Moss, the Burne family and their predecessors, going back 1649. This historical succession of stages in the human exploitation of natural resources included the building of a canal (now known as the Shropshire Union) around the eastern edge of the Moss, which deprived it of a large percentage of its water supplies. That Blakemere survived at all was because the Burne family of Loynton Hall kept the wetland area as their pleasure ground for shooting and fishing. Natural and social histories clearly intertwined, and the book brings out the complexity of both natural succession as a process changing the character of a mere by stages into fen and bog, and the succession of social and economic change which, in this case, accelerated the speed at which transformation took place. Members of the group met regularly for some eighteen months to report, discuss written and re-written contributions and select the large number of illustrations. Historians and naturalists found it easy to sympathise with each others approach to a narrative which concentrates especially on the last five hundred years of the story when human records are not too difficult to find. A social historian can see that the project was made easier because the family records of successive estate owners concentrated a good deal of evidence in one place. Interaction with naturalists interpreting this information was hugely rewarding. Loynton Moss published by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust December 2004 50 pages over 70 illustrations and maps in full colour ISBN 09549385-0-X obtainable from local bookshops and the Trust at the Wolseley Centre, Wolseley Bridge, Stafford. ST17OWT Price : £5.99
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