Back to east moors
Back to east moors & derwent valley

Moorland Grazing on the East Moors

Sheep grazing on the East Moors, near Higger Tor

As with other moorlands of the Peak District, visitors see open windswept areas with a scattering of sheep and imagine this is as nature intended.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  Nature left to its own devices would carpet this land with trees, with oak and birch predominating; it is the farming of sheep that prevents this happening.

Sheep

In prehistory, much of the East Moors was farmed more intensively.  For the last 2000 years however, the moorlands have been the domain of sheep.

Grazing of the heather and course grasses must have been continuous, for it is the sheep that eat young saplings and have consequently prevented woodland establishing.

The birch woodlands on Ramsley Moor and the land above Gardom's Edge today provide a notable exception.  This is due to an intense accidental moorland fire, several decades ago, that removed all vegetation and bit deeply into the underlying peat.  This left these areas a wasteland for many years, with nothing for the sheep to eat.  When stock was reintroduced, saplings had grown beyond the point where they could be grazed-out and so the woodlands in these areas were left to establish themselves.

Birch woodland on Big Moor gives an impression of how the uplands may have looked in the Mesolithic

The sheep you see on the moors today, as in the past, belong to farmers, many of whom live in scattered farmsteads at the moorland fringe or in the valleys below.

Overstones Farm, below the southern end of Stanage Edge above Hathersage, at the edge of an intake on relatively favourable land at the edge of moorland

While some animals are kept on the moors all year round, they are periodically gathered to be dipped and tupped (mated).  Some are taken to better land elsewhere for fattening and sale, or to be over-wintered.  On some moors isolated and often-ruined stretches of drystone wall are all that remains of traditional gathering folds, sheep washes and shepherds shelters.

Grouse

For the last 200 years many of the moors have also been managed for grouse shooting, although on the East Moors this practice is much diminished today.

Traditionally the moorlands have been carefully managed by controlled burning, the aim being to create a mosaic of heather of different ages.  The new growth provides food for sheep and grouse alike, while the old heather creates cover for nesting.

The Red Grouse has played an important part on the gritstone moorlands, where extensive tracts were set aside and not improved so that it could be reared and shot

Organised grouse shooting became popular in the early 19th century.

On the East Moors, the Duke of Rutland built a large shooting lodge at Longshaw, at the heart of an impressive moorland estate managed specifically for this sport. Similarly, the Dukes of Devonshire shot extensively on their moorlands above Chatsworth House.  Today lines of old shooting butts, either drystone-walled or built of turf, can still be seen.  Here the shooting parties took cover as the birds were driven towards them.  Sometimes there are short walls between each butt, built to prevent the participants getting carried away and accidentally shooting each other!

This impressive house, at Longshaw Lodge near Fox House, was built in the 19th century for the Duke of Rutland as a shooting lodge to accommodate grouse shooting parties

For more information on grouse and the moorland habitat go to heather moorland.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Back to top