Coillte's plans to cut down 180-year-old oaks on 13 acres of Dartry forest in Co Monaghan are being opposed by local residents. These trees are all that remain of the 1,300 acres of oak that was growing on Dartry Estate when the Land Commission took over its management in 1949.

    The ancient oak forest was marked on the first Ordnance Survey Map in 1830. In subsequent years, the oaks have been felled and replaced by conifers. The forest is a major asset to the people of Monaghan and Cavan, they say. Local resident Cormac McCaul is critical of Coillte's management of the forest.

    "Coillte is removing anything of interest," he said. "The Famine Wall built round the estate in the 1840s has fallen in several places, the sandstone in several bridges is crumbling, and the mausoleum where the Earls of Dartry are buried is dilapidated."

    A Coillte spokesperson said it expected to fell 15 oaks and 22 beeches next year, with more to get the chop in subsequent years. "They are over-mature."

     The 15 oaks are worth approximately €10,000 as timber. The semi-state body intends to replace the mature oaks with oak saplings, according to the spokesperson.
© Sunday Business Post

Forestry Network Newsletter COMMENTS:
     Residents originally gave permission for the removal of circa 15 of these oaks on the grounds that “they were for the Jeannie Johnston.” FNN wonders how many residents in how many parts of the country were told this, given the substantial unauthorised felling that took place in Killarney National Park alone for the famine replica ship?

History
     The demesne at Dartry was formerly called Dawson's Grove. The original house, built in the late 1760s, was described as “rather heavy in appearance, both in its external appearance and its internal decorations”. The whole place was enlarged and re-landscaped in a 'natural style' in the 1770s and 1780s. The earliest standing oaks would therefore date from the late 17th or early 18th century.

There were further additions and modifications to the park in the 1840s and 1850s when the great Elizabethan Revival mansion house and the terraces and parterres that connected the house to Lough Dromore were designed by William Burn.
    The Estate includes a domed mausoleum (c.1770), which was built to a design of James Wyatt on the wooded island in Lough Dromore. Thomas Dawson, first Lord Dartry and afterwards Viscount Cremorne, built this mausoleum in memory of his first wife, Lady Anne. It contained a remarkable life-sized sculptural group that included an angel with outstretched wings by the famous sculptor Joseph Wilton.
    While the mansion, after standing empty for many years, was demolished by the Forestry Commission circa 1950, the mausoleum was repaired by the Irish Georgian Society in 1961, only to see the sculptures degrade into a very poor battered state and the building fall into a dreadful condition over the next 20 years. Since Coillte became the owners in 1988, the sculpture has been smashed to pieces and the building has become a total ruin. This is how Coillte looks after our heritage, in spite of the best efforts of conservationists.
     Most of the oak plantations belonged to the 1770s and 1780s in what used to be once one of Ireland's foremost designed landscapes. The fact that the house was demolished and destruction wrought to the park and woodlands by the Forestry Commission is a familiar and depressing story. In fact it is remarkable that anything of the old woodlands has survived – and hence all the more important historically to ensure the preservation of what remains.
     Ironically, it is a policy of Monaghan County Council in its Development Plan to "Preserve trees or groups of trees which form a significant feature in the landscape or in setting the character of an area.”

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