May Moss (bog)

Not to be confused with with the activist May Moss.
May Moss
Site of Special Scientific Interest
Looking westwards across May Moss
Location within North Yorkshire
LocationNorth Yorkshire
Grid referenceSE876960
Coordinates54°21′07″N 0°39′14″W / 54.352°N 0.654°W / 54.352; -0.654
Area170 ha (420 acres)
Notification3 June 1983
(superseded in 1998)
Natural England website

May Moss is a peat bog in the North York Moors National Park, in North Yorkshire, England. The bog is 3.2 kilometres (2 mi) east of the old Saltersgate Inn at a height of 253 metres (830 ft) above sea level, and is the watershed where water feeds Eller Beck to the north, and the River Derwent to the south. The site was a declared an SSSI in June 1983, but was subsumed into the larger North York Moors SSSI in 1998.

Site description

May Moss is an ombrotrophic mire (a location where the only water source is rainfall) which is at 244 metres (801 ft) above sea level, some 3.2 kilometres (2 mi) east of Saltersgate Inn, and is part of Fylingdales Moor.[1][2][3][4] It has peat that reaches to at least 6 metres (20 ft) in depth, and has an accumulation of peat lasting 9,000 years,[5][6][7] with 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) of peat being laid down over the 2,000 years up to the year 1998.[8] The bog overlays a bedrock of Middle Jurassic sandstone of the Osgodby Formation and acts as a watershed which feeds streams northwards via Eller beck first into the Murk Esk, then the River Esk, westwards towards Pickering Beck, and southwards into the River Derwent via a stream known as Long Grain.[9][10][11][4] The name is first recorded in 1335 as mawemose, the first part being perhaps an Old Norse name, and the second part from mos meaning a peat bog.[12] It is possible that May Moss was mentioned in a document by Alan de Percy in the 12th century when he granted lands to the monks of Whitby Abbey covering a huge swathe of what is now the North York Moors.[13] During the nineteenth century, peat was worked at the site commercially for use as a fuel.[14] In the days before tarmacked roads when the moors were covered by old tracks and pannierways, May Moss was noted as a dangerous bog, and was also the haunt of robbers, so it was to be avoided.[15][16]

May Moss has been preserved partially by a biologist persuading the Forestry Commission not to plant trees there, but also by the installation of RAF Fylingdales in the 1960s (which lies just to the north). By fencing off the surrounding moorland, the MoD accidentally helped to keep the area untouched.[17] In conjunction with the base at RAF Fylingdales, a small weather recording station was installed at May Moss in August 2010 to note the water table depths and the temperature; precipitation data will be collated from the meteorological station at RAF Fylingdales.[18][19] In 2009, efforts were undertaken to increase the size of the bog by felling trees on its edges. The trees had been planted between 1975 and 1983 in an attempt to create a lodgepole pine plantation; however the root system of the trees was slowly drying the bog out.[20][21] It was hoped that the bog will then enlarge to an area of 140 hectares (350 acres) and absorb excess rainwater to prevent flooding downstream of the site.[3] In 2020, the site was listed as covering 170 hectares (420 acres),[22] whilst the North York Moors National Park has 5,500 hectares (14,000 acres) of deep peat (deep peat is determined to be peat which has a depth greater than 40 centimetres (16 in)).[23]

The site is the only one of its kind on the North York Moors which is still actively accumulating peat.[5] Samples of the peat have been taken to determine rates of climate change over several millennia.[24] Studies and research on the peat have indicated a dip in temperatures between the 16th and 19th centuries, which is referred to in scientific circles as the Little Ice Age.[25]

May Moss was designated as an SSSI in 1983, but in 1998, it was subsumed into the larger North York Moors SSSI.[26][27]

Flora and fauna

In the 1960s May Moss was recognised as the southern extent of the reach of carex pauciflora in Great Britain.[28] Other plants recorded there include drosera rotundifolia (round-leafed sundew), calluna vulgaris (common heather), erica tetralix (cross-leaved heath), eriophorum (cotton grass), vaccinium oxycoccos (small cranberry), vaccinium myrtillus (bilberry) rubus chamaemorus (cloudberry), and andromeda polifolia (bog rosemary).[29][30][31][11] The cloudberry and bog rosemary only occur on May Moss within the North York Moors.[32] Pools and hollows on the site are usually are host to sphagnums (sphagnum cuspidatum, sphagnum recurvum, sphagnum papillosum, and sphagnum magellanicum).[33]

It is known that the marsh harrier used to breed on May Moss, constructing nests of heather, grass and rushes.[34] The butterfly species coenonympha tullia was first observed on the site in the 1950s,[35] and adders are known to be present on the bog.[36]

References

  1. ^ Lehnhart-Barnett 2022, p. 23.
  2. ^ Elgee 1912, p. 29.
  3. ^ a b "New lease of life for ancient bog". BBC News. 11 September 2009. Retrieved 3 September 2025.
  4. ^ a b Chiverrell 1998, p. 59.
  5. ^ a b Chiverrell 2003, p. 21.
  6. ^ Atherden, Margaret (March 1999). "The vegetation history of Yorkshire: a bog-trotter's guide to God's own county". The Naturalist. 124 (1, 028). Yorkshire Naturalists' Union: 149. ISSN 0028-0771. OCLC 4286535.
  7. ^ Simmons, Ian G. (2022). "1: the huge expanse of the moor". The Moorlands of England and Wales: An Environmental History, 8000 BC - AD 2000. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-7486-1730-2.
  8. ^ Chiverrell 1998, p. 60.
  9. ^ Reed, Frederick Richard Cowper (1901). The geological history of the rivers of East Yorkshire, being the Sedgwick prize essay for the year 1900. London: C. J. Clay and Sons. p. 45. OCLC 11368522.
  10. ^ Fox-Strangways, Charles (1882). The geology of the country between Whitby and Scarborough. London: HMSO. p. 53. OCLC 5463734.
  11. ^ a b Lehnhart-Barnett 2022, p. 24.
  12. ^ Smith, A. H. (1979) [1928]. The Place Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire. English Place Name Society. p. 95. OCLC 19714705.
  13. ^ Elgee 1912, pp. 6–7.
  14. ^ Rutter, J. G. (169). "Industrial archaeology in North-East Yorkshire list of sites; are I, Scarborough". Transactions of the Scarborough and District Archaeological Society. II (12). Scarborough: Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society: 19. ISSN 1474-1229. OCLC 2324885.
  15. ^ Hayes, Raymond H. (1988). Old roads and pannierways in North East Yorkshire. Danby: North York Moors National Park. p. 32. ISBN 0-907480-20-9.
  16. ^ East, W. E. (1932). "the historical geography of the town ports and roads of Whitby". The Geographical Journal. 80 (6). London: Royal Geographical Society: 495. Bibcode:1932GeogJ..80..484E. doi:10.2307/1784149. ISSN 0016-7398. JSTOR 1784149. OCLC 695467893.
  17. ^ Beer, Amy-Jane (23 May 2023). "Country diary: A boggy, untouched paradise for wildlife". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 September 2025.
  18. ^ Chiverrell 2003, p. 29.
  19. ^ Lehnhart-Barnett 2022, p. 29.
  20. ^ Foster, Mark (14 August 2012). "Restoration of North York Moors bog hailed big success". The Northern Echo. Retrieved 3 September 2025.
  21. ^ Lehnhart-Barnett 2022, p. 2.
  22. ^ Lehnhart-Barnett, Hannah; Chiverrell, Richard (9 March 2020). "Rewilding blanket bog from former conifer plantations: hydrological processes, aquatic biogeochemistry and carbon fluxes". Egu General Assembly Conference Abstracts. Copernicus Meetings: 9819. Bibcode:2020EGUGA..22.9819L. doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-9819. Retrieved 3 September 2025.
  23. ^ Minting, Stuart (13 September 2025). "MP's anger at Defra decision on deep peat ban". Farming News. The Yorkshire Post. p. 4. ISSN 0963-1496.
  24. ^ Herbert, Ian (25 August 1999). "Yorkshire's biggest bog saved for the nation". The Independent. Retrieved 3 September 2025.
  25. ^ Jeeves, Paul (4 November 2010). "For peat's sake... bog undergoes hi-tech restoration". The Yorkshire Post. p. 7. ISSN 0963-1496.
  26. ^ "May Moss SSSI (Archived)". designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk. Retrieved 4 September 2025.
  27. ^ "North York Moors" (PDF). designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk. p. 1. Retrieved 4 September 2025.
  28. ^ Raistrick, Arthur (1966). North York Moors. London: HMSO. p. 23. OCLC 1443810047.
  29. ^ Elgee 1912, p. 80.
  30. ^ Jeeves, Paul (9 August 2013). "Landscape of the past may offer a key to the future". The Yorkshire Post. p. 3. ISSN 0963-1496.
  31. ^ Abbot, P. P. (March 2008). "Botanical report for 2008; flowers and ferns". The Naturalist. 133 (1, 064). Yorkshire Naturalists' Union: 135. ISSN 0028-0771. OCLC 4286535.
  32. ^ "North York Moors" (PDF). designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk. p. 2. Retrieved 4 September 2025.
  33. ^ Chiverrell 1998, p. 62.
  34. ^ Clarke, William Eagle (1907). The birds of Yorkshire : being a historical account of the avi-fauna of the county. London: A. Brown. p. 316. OCLC 1041633513.
  35. ^ Walsh, George (1953). The Natural History of the Scarborough district. London: Natural History Museum Library. p. 170. OCLC 1049882981.
  36. ^ "May Moss". northyorks.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 7 December 2023. Retrieved 4 September 2025.

Sources

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.