A Deer Park Reading List, and the Chat contributions

I mentioned a couple of possible deer forests up here from documentary evidence

Invermoriston
This is listed in Gilbert as Invernorsyn in a charter that dating 1381 x !384 to the Earl of Buchan granting part of the lordship of Glenurquhart and Glenmoriston. The deer park was presumably connected with the occupation of Urquhart Castle.

The fort which I consider might have been a hunting lodge is recorded and scheduled in the record as Allt na Criche Promontory Fort her.highland.gov.uk/Monument/MHG249 and canmore.org.uk/site/12286/allt-na-criche
As Robert Gourlay it is too slight to be a major defensive site and its location is odd for this anyway. If you look at aerial photographs of the area there is a major earthen and stone bank or dyke running roughly E/W just S of the fort and this can be traced for some way and then appears to run into open moorland to the N (now partly obscured by a substantial windfarm). Whether this is part of a deer park or later boundaries connected with sheep farming or just excluding deer and stock from the woodlands would require a more detailed study. I did identify in 1997 a possible continuation of this boundary to the NE around Allt Saigh as part of a rapid walkover survey for a woodland grant scheme - and this report is stored in the HER as
librarylink.highland.gov.uk/LLFiles/10231/full_10231.PDF
An excavation was made across the dykes by Graham Robbins in 1998 and this may just be a more recent feature from his report her.highland.gov.uk/Event/EHG337

A deer forest in this area makes sense as a hunting park for the lordly residents of Urquhart Castle but whether the park was in the woods below the fort at Levishie (there are no obvious boundaries to define the deer within this woodland and the natural boundaries would perhaps be alongside the Allt na Criche and/or the Levishie Burn but would require more intensive survey) or was on the open ground on the moor is not clear. There are routes up to here via Achnaconerach and possibly there was an old route via Dhivach and the back of Mealfuarvonie. Note the names Allt na bealaich off the Allt Saigh and Allt na Criche or 'burn of the boundary'.




Strathrannoch
Gilbert dismisses a forest at Rannoch but is I think mistaking it for Strathrannoch centred at NH393 725. I think the charter mentions 2 mart (marten) skins as part of the rent but can't remember the date. I got two medieval dates for charcoal samples associated with iron bloomery deposits
up this glen - see her.highland.gov.uk/Monument/MHG17994
for more information on these.
However a deer forest in Mid Ross does seem rather less plausible. Why would the Earl of Ross, or whoever, likely coming from Dingwall Castle want to travel so far before starting a hunt as their horses would be spent before they got here. There is no known fort or similar that they could have rested nearby and the are was not the most secure politically. It doesn't help that there is extensive modern plantations at the S end of the glen where a boundary might be anticipated if this had been a deer park, though nothing is recorded on earlier OS mapping.