If you look closely at the Sperrin uplands there are still many features created by past farming generations. It is a link to our ancestors and a reminder of how well they knew their land, soil and landscape and worked with it.
‘Lazy beds’ are the practice of building up ridges on strips of land in the outer fields where the soil was thin and of poor quality. This enabled farmers to make the most of the limited space available. It was very hard work, (not lazy at all!) It took a lot of people helping but with the high population at the time it suited the area and the way families worked together to help each other. Potatoes were the most common crop grown although they were also used for oats. ‘Lazy beds’ were 3 times more productive than horse-ploughed drills. The raised beds are drier and therefore warmer than the moist flat ground around them. The beds warm up more quickly in the morning and retain heat longer. At night they protect crops from frost by draining the denser cold air into the ditches.
All around the Glenelly Valley it is common to still see the ‘Lazy Beds’ in the landscape, just look for the ripples. These are mostly in areas it is harder to use a tractor and plough so the area has not been ’improved’ into modern grassland. Just think these ripples link us back to the time of the Great Famine when the crops on them were lost through the potato blight.
There is great evidence of various field boundaries in the Sperrin uplands. Planted hedgerows not being so common here but many ‘hedgebanks’, an earthen bank crowned with a growth of natural vegetation to the well built stone walls. Hedgerows not only acted as a boundary but also as wind break for crops, shelter for stock and they reduce soil erosion in an area with little woodland. Hedgerows provide vital resources for mammals, birds, and insect species. As well as being an important habitat in their own right, they act as wildlife corridors allowing dispersal between isolated habitats. Learn more about the heritage value of hedgerows on the ‘Exploring the Hedgerow’ page.
Both stone walls and stone ditches occur on the farm; the later are simply banks of loose stones (often from land reclamation and clearance) while the former are narrower and often higher constructed of interlocking stones. These dry stone walls would date back to the 17th and 18th century and the fact they remain is proof of the skill of the builders, these heritage skills of dry stone walling are not as common these days as farmers prefer to erect wire fences as it is quicker and less expensive. Compared to modern wire fences dry stone walls provide more wildlife habitat with the gaps in the walls provide nesting and shelter for birds, minibeast and small mammals. They also provide more shelter for livestock during snow storms and high winds.
Most of the cultivated land in this area is composed of man-made soils, created by the constant addition of manure, sand and lime repeated over decades. This was to improve the natural acidic peat soil that would be found in the Sperrins and areas of reclaimed bogs. Lime would make the soil less acidic allowing plants to be able to take up nutrients in the soil that otherwise would be locked away.
Before the times of large industrial quarries lime was extracted by mining from rock outcrops like the nearby Butterlope Glen and other sites. The lime boulders were burnt in an intense peat fire in a ‘Lime kiln’. The fire would last for 2 days and made up of layers of stone and peat. Someone would need to be there all the time to stoke the fire and add more peat down the ‘chimney’. When the fire was dead the remaining lime was raked out the door.
A lime kiln can be seen at the foot of Bradkeel Road close to the Presbyterian Church and an impressive example can be visited along the roadside in a picturesque setting close to Rylagh Burn a few miles outside Omagh.
