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Turbary - the Right to Cut Turf

Turbary is the term used to describe the ancient right to cut turf on a particular area of bog. These rights came about with the resettlement of confiscated land or by prescription. Prescription is a legal term meaning that if a person is able to demonstrate that they cut turf without secrecy, without permission and without force continuously for a period of 30 years they have a turbary right. It was also customary to lease turbary (Con-acre) on a seasonal basis for 11 months.

Originally, turbary gave individuals the right to cut turf for their own domestic use, effectively allowing people with no other means to fuel their homes. However in the past turf was cut by hand. The arrival of mechanisation has meant more peat is being harvested over a wider area of bog and on a semi-commercial basis. Since the 15th Century traditional turbary has been responsible for the loss of 233,830ha of raised bog and 85,590ha of blanket bog. That is 73% of the original area of raised bog and 11% of the original area of blanket bog.

It is this change in how turbary is being practiced, coupled with the ever increasing demands placed on the bog habitat as a resource that has made turbary an urgent problem today. Major research has shown that peat extraction is having far reaching effects on bogs today. The following are some of the effects of turf cutting:

• Peat cutting on raised bogs, even on the margins of the high bog can over time cause widespread drying out of the bog up to 500m from the face bank.
• In its natural state a bog is 95% to 98% water. Drainage removes water and increases the dry matter content of the peat. This causes shrinkage of the peat. The bog surface then slopes towards the cutting increasing the surface water gradient and therefore the rate of surface discharge. This process at Raheenmore caused a subsidence of 1.5m in the peat surface at the edge of the bog.
• Drains put in to dry out the bog in preparation for extraction have shown that bogs subside by as much as 5 to 6m depth alongside a drain and the effects of the subsidence are in evidence at a distance of 500m from the drain itself.
• The maintenance of high stable water tables in a bog is dependent not only on the existence of gentle surface slopes but also on the retention of a large water storage capacity in the acrotelm (the upper living layer of the bog surface).
• On the high bog away from the rand, once the surface slope exceeds 30cm/100m the acrotelm starts to deteriorate and by the time the surface slope reaches 1.5m/100m the acrotelm has disappeared entirely. Once the acrotelm disappears the bog is effectively no longer accumulating peat and has become moribund.
• Significant changes in the vegetation on the bog have been recorded due to change of a few centimeters in the water levels.

Complicated land ownership patterns and the different rights associated with land make protection of peatlands a complicated issue in Ireland. Turbary rights on land of conservation importance need to addressed if we are to have a hope of preventing these landscapes from disappearing in the near future.

See the recent announcement of the Minister at the Department of Arts Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands to halt turf cutting on Special areas of Conservation.