Building record 15216 - Peat Processing Building and Railway, Peat Farm, Lindow Moss

<1> University of Salford (Centre for Applied Archaeology), 2020, Historic Building Investigation: Lindow Moss Peat Farm, Moor Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire East, R4473 (Client Report). SCH8947.

A building record (Level 2) was produced in 2020 for a 20th-century building formerly used for processing peat extracted from the adjacent Lindow Moss. The study was carried out in support of proposed re-development of the site including demolition of the building.

The study concluded that the two-storey, brick-built structure was erected on an undeveloped plot in circa 1960 to process the peat extracted from Lindow Moss. The interior originally comprised an open, roofed platform with a large loading bay protected by massive timber doors on the east side. Three small extensions were added to the building prior to 1970, and a narrow-gauge railway was built to transport peat from the moss to the building for processing. This is believed to have been the last working peat railway in Britain, although no visible remains survived at the time of the survey; three locomotives, several wagons and other railway equipment were recovered by the Moseley Rail Trust and transferred to the Apedale Railway Centre at Newcastle-under- Lyme in June 2020. Whilst the building contained very little in the way of fixtures and fittings to demonstrate the precise nature of the processes that were undertaken, the project has enabled a review of the limited documentary material available to be combined with the physical evidence embedded in the historic fabric to produce a detailed narrative of the building’s development.

<2> Turner R. C. & Scaife R. G. A (eds), 1995, Bog Bodies. New Discoveries and New Perspectives, p.12 (Book). SCH4324.

Discusses the history of peat extraction at Lindow Moss (see CHER 1472/0/0). Hand-digging of peat continued well into the twentieth century. In the 1960s, a peat extraction company was established to work the last surviving area of raised bog, the remotest part of the bog straddling the parish boundary, covering c.60 ha, about one tenth of the original size of the moss. The company continued to cut the peat by hand until the 1970s after which mechanical excavators were used. The modern workings invlove digging long trenches or mossrooms, 7m wide and up to 200m long. Alternate rooms being dug to a depth of 1m with the peat stacked between to dry out for 6 months to a year. Site of the finds of the Lindow bog bodies (Lindow I, II, III and IV) in the 1980s.

<3> Dr Jonathan Lageard, 2024, People & Peat: Peat cutting and other history from Lindow Moss, Powerpoint presentation, Slides 11-15 (Other Interpretation Materials). SCH9761.

In the 1960s a small 'sideways-sitting' loco was used on the moss; the tracks of this and later peat railways on Lindow were temporary and were periodically re-routed to access different areas of the peat. Although the tracks have been mostly removed, discarded rails can still be found on the moss. In the 1980s and 1990s one of the diesel locomotives used at Lindow was a Lister No 50888 pulling up to four peat-filled wagons or tubs. The railway ceased to function in 2000 and the Lister No 50888 and two other locomotives, including a Keef No 4, remained in the engine shed until 2020 when they were purchased by the Apedale Valley Light Railway, Staffordshire and where the Lister No 50888 is now a working heritage exhibit. Peat was last removed from central areas of Lindow Moss in the summer of 2020; the site of Wilmslow Peat Farm was redveloped for housing and the remaining areas of 'cut over' peat restored.