Press release about 'Wood and Water' survey project

Description

'First survey of early Scots industrial site launched'

A SPECIALIST team has started the first survey of an "internationally significant" estate that was the site of one of Scotland's earliest industrial improvement schemes.

Researchers launched the survey on the Mar estate, Clackmannanshire, in the hope that it would make the site more publicly accessible and support moves to secure formal recognition and protection of key features.

John Erskine, the sixth Earl of Mar (1675-1732), made the estate one of Scotland's earliest industrial improvement schemes, supplying fresh water to the new town of Alloa.

Work started on the scheme in 1701 and was almost complete when Mar was exiled for backing the failed Jacobite Rising of 1715. By the middle of the 18th century, the scheme had succeeded in turning Alloa into an industrial powerhouse.

The survey will focus on the northern part of Mar's original plan and will include the Gartmorn hydraulic scheme - with its weir, aqueduct and reservoir and dam. It also covers two circular plantations - Octagon Wood and Cowpark Wood.

The project brings together specialists whose skills include historical research, aerial photography, land surveying and digital mapping.

Margaret Stewart, a lecturer in architectural history at Edinburgh College of Art, says: "The Mar estate is a landscape of international significance but, inexplicably, no integrated survey of it has ever b