Press release...

Several newspapers in Cumbria have agreed to publish this letter, either this week or next, so let's hope that some good information flows in as a result…

Can you help to shed light on the demise 

of Cumbria’s Juniper trees?

As part of a research project aimed at helping the Cumbria Wildlife Trust with their Juniper regeneration programme, I am trying to discover just how many of these amazing trees there were in our county before industry, the miners and farmers moved in.

At this time of year, the evenings are drawing in, the nights getting colder and outside, we hear the crack and bang of fireworks, but how many of you know that Cumbria was once the gunpowder capital of Europe? 

As a 3^rd year Wildlife & Media mature student at the University of Cumbria, and in conjunction with the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, I am undertaking research into the rise and fall of this industry and looking to find out what effect this had on the Junipers of Cumbria.

The Junipers? Yes, that is why gunpowder mills started to spring up all over South Cumbria, because the best charcoal in the production of the finest gunpowder was made from Juniper wood. If I can establish the scale of gunpowder production, I hope to relate this back to how much charcoal, and thus how much Juniper would have been used. But we may have exported or imported both gunpowder and Juniper, so this will not be a simple task.

I already have information from an excellent book called ‘Gunpowder Mills of Cumbria’ by Ian Tyler, and also ‘The Leven Valley, a secret past’ by Ronald Mein & Richard Sanderson’, but I need more. I am trying to trace all three of these authors with a view to interviewing them. Can you help?

Do you have any relatives or friends that might know of anyone who had a parent who worked in the Gunpowder Mills? Perhaps you know someone who works or has worked in offices where old record books were kept; possibly churches, schools, company offices, council vaults; the list is endless. I am looking for old photographs, sketches or paintings that might show the landscape before these trees were felled, also old maps that showed the vegetation make up of these areas. Perhaps you have other ideas that you would like to share with me, so that I can produce an article that will eventually be free for all to read on-line. This is a very exciting project and I hope you will join me in bringing the past to life, so that we can help the Cumbria Wildlife Trust with the regeneration of this beautiful tree, and in return help the local wildlife that depends so much on it.