NSA Special Qualities

Extract from: Scottish Natural Heritage (2010). The special qualities of the National Scenic Areas . SNH Commissioned Report No.374. The Special Qualities of the River Tay (Dunkeld) National Scenic Area • The beauty of cultural landscapes accompanying natural grandeur • The ‘Gateway to the Highlands’ • Characterful rivers, waterfalls and kettle-hole lochs • Exceptionally rich, varied and beautiful woodlands • The picturesque cathedral town of Dunkeld • Drama of The Falls of Braan and The Hermitage • Dunkeld House policies • Significant specimen trees • The iconic view from King’s Seat Special Quality Further information • The beauty of cultural landscapes accompanying natural grandeur Appreciation of this area’s scenery goes Describing the scenery in 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth back at least as far as the 18 th century, succinctly described its enduring qualities: ‘ From one hill, through different openings under the trees, we looked up when it was seen as a ‘sublime’ the vale of the Tay to a great distance; a magnificent landscape, combining the qualities of prospect at that time of evening: woody and rich – corn, power, vastness, light, colour, sound and greenfields, and cattle, the winding Tay, and distant loudness, and remoteness. mountains. Looked down the river to the town of Dunkeld, which lies low, under irregular hills, covered with wood to their rocky summits, and bounded by higher mountains, The area is now an extensive cultural which are bare.’ (1997 edition) landscape of managed policies, designed landscapes, compact The town of Dunkeld sits within a series of consciously settlements, farmland and forest. designed and managed landscapes: • The townscape of Dunkeld itself, with its late 17 th The balance, variety and composition of century houses, and the park of Stanley Hill. these cultural features accompany, and often utilise, the natural grandeur of the • The riverside walks and plantings, bordering important fishing beats. surrounding highlands, straths, rivers, and haughlands. It is a delicate balance • The landscape garden of the Hermitage, along the that relies on a blend of both cultural River Braan. beauty and majestic natural scenery. • The Cathedral policies, laid out with ornamental plantings leading down to the river. Even stretches of the apparently natural • The garden policies of Dunkeld House. It is now rivers and waters were modified in the smaller than its historic extent, which formed the late 18th century. This harnessed water framework of much of the surrounding landscape. In power to service the flourishing linen 1885 it had 7,700 ha (18,500 acres) of plantations, 50 miles of path and 30 miles of carriage drives. industry. Many stretches of the River Tay’s banks have been enhanced with Work carried out by John Murray 3rd Duke of Atholl 1764- tree planting, access and fishing stations. 74 and continued by his successors forms the basis of the greater part of the area’s character. Birnam is a planned settlement dating from the arrival of the railway in 1856. • The ‘Gateway to the Highlands’ Dunkeld has for long been lauded and As a tourist spot, easily reached on short tours from visited as the ‘Gateway to the Highlands’, Edinburgh, the scenery distils what many traditionally regard as Highland scenery. where lowland scenery changes to highland and both can be appreciated, ‘Dunkeld… was reckoned to be the entrance to the often in the same view. Highlands, the place to pause and tune one’s sensibility to the sublime experiences which lay ahead…’ Andrews Strath Tay is at its narrowest here, with (1990) the river curving around under the crags ‘T he rugged backdrop of Craig a Barns and Craig Vinean, of Craig a Barns to the north, and rocky the two imposing hills which guard this gateway to the Birnam Hill, with its old slate quarries, to Highlands.’ Dingwall (1994) the south. Broadly speaking the geological units of the Grampian The wide and smooth-flowing River Tay Highlands and the Central Lowlands are separated by the has a lowland appearance, whereas the Highland Boundary Fault which runs through the NSA. River Braan, whose confluence is The different landscape characteristics, highland and opposite Dunkeld, presents a highland lowland, in the NSA are broadly: alternative. • The rounded uplands of the Mounth Highlands in the east of the NSA that lead down to This transition from highland to lowland • The lower, broad undulating slopes of the Highland is especially marked in winter, when Foothills landscape character type. snow covered summits are the backcloth to a low-lying mosaic of green and • The settled, riparian banks of Strath Tay (Lower Highland Glen LCT) that crosses through the NSA. brown. • The narrower gorge and falls of Strath Braan leading in Nowadays this ‘gateway feel’ is to meet Strath Tay from the west and experienced when travelling north on the • Further to the west, the higher craggier summits of the A9 trunk road, descending the hill to West Highlands. Dunkeld, then rounding the corner to To the south the landscape changes further with the River behold vistas opening-up of Strath Tay Tay flowing through flatter, broader lowlands. and the Highland hills behind. • Characterful rivers, waterfalls and kettle-hole lochs The rivers, falls and lochs vary greatly, The Falls of Braan include a waterfall of about 40 feet, with different water bodies adding described in 1789: different interest, experiences and ‘The two rocky cheeks of the river almost uniting atmosphere to the scene. The River Tay compress the stream into a very narrow compass; and the meanders in great loops of deep shining channel, which descends abruptly, taking also a sudden peaty water, the river gravelly rather than turn, the water suffers more than common violence from rocky and with alternating long pools and the double resistance it receives from compression and obliquity… This whole scene… is… picturesqueley swift glides. In contrast the River Braan’s beautiful in the highest degree. The composition is course has spectacular turbulent and perfect, but yet the parts are so intricate, so various, and tumbling rapids and waterfalls as it so complicated, that I never found any piece of nature forces its way through a deep gorge. less obvious to imitation…’ Gilpin quoted in Andrews (1990) Contrasts between the characters of The Tay and its many large tributaries drain an area of these two rivers were intentionally and 3,000 square miles giving an average flow of about 200 consciously exploited in the Hermitage cubic metres per second, the greatest flow of any river in and Dunkeld designed landscapes. the country. The river is one of the most notable salmon Walks led through from the broad, quiet fishing rivers, famed for its large salmon, and angling has course of the Tay at Inver, into the long been popular. narrow, craggy valley of the swift, 2 rushing waters of the Braan. The Lunan Burn rises on Craig More, three miles (5 km) north of Dunkeld, to flow south and then east, through the lochs of Lowes, Butterstone, Clunie and Drumellie. It joins Other contrasts lie further east, where the River Isla two miles (3km) west of Coupar Angus. the Highland foothills that extend from Dunkeld to Rattray are cut by the Lunan Loch of the Lowes is a Scottish Wildlife Trust nature Burn, a small, fast flowing highland burn reserve, famous for its ospreys. arising in the Mounth Highlands north of Dunkeld. It forms a steep gorge as it descends through the hills. As the burn flows eastwards forming the Lunan valley, so the area is peppered with tranquil lochans of varying size. These have all formed in a series of kettle-holes; three lie closely together in the east of the NSA, Loch of Lowes, Loch of Craiglush and Loch of Butterstone. • Exceptionally rich, varied and beautiful woodlands The NSA is richly afforested and Craigvinean Forest (‘C rag of the Goats’ ), one of wooded. The tree-cover varies widely Scotland's oldest managed forests, was created from larch seed brought from the Alps for the Second Duke of with different tree species, management Atholl. This was part of the great expansion of forestry in history and age structure, which creates the eighteenth century, centred on Perthshire. Innovative exceptional variety. However, key to this tree seeding techniques were employed, including variety are the areas of open field and (allegedly) scattering seed by cannon onto the dramatic pasture that provide an important setting crags of Craig a Barns. Craigvinean was laid out as part of The Hermitage policies. It has been popular since the for the woods and enable longer views to time of the Victorians, who delighted in forest paths be possible. leading to follies and dramatic viewpoints. The smaller areas of natural and semi- Woodland types include: natural woodlands contrast with the • Open deciduous woodlands on the steep, rocky slopes extensive managed forests planted in the of the Highland edge. great 18th century forestry expansion, • Riparian woods along the Tay on steep, inaccessible centred principally in this area. The banks, as at Craig Tronach in the southern part of the Dukes of Atholl pioneered large-scale NSA. forestry and from 1738 to 1830 planted • Upland, mixed woods of ash, hazel and oak with some 27 million conifers – ‘ for beauty beech and wych elm in gorges along the Lunan, as at and profit’ – around Dunkeld. Den of Riechip. • Lunan Valley coppiced oak woodlands, at Cardney The Hermitage woodland, originally Wood. th planted in the 18 century, is now largely • Fungarth Juniper Wood, at just under 25ha, one of the mixed conifers of Scots pine, Douglas fir largest juniper woods in Perthshire. and Norway spruce. Important unwooded areas of field and pasture are found along the floor of the strath and around the kettle-hole Craigvinean Forest is the greatest of the lochs in the east of the NSA.

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