NPPP 2022 SEA Scoping Report: Topic 7 Landscape and Cultural Heritage

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, SEA scop­ing Baseline information

Top­ic 7 – Land­scape and cul­tur­al heritage

Con­tents

Ques­tions for con­sulta­tion author­it­ies Con­text 2 Spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Park land­scape 2 Nation­al Scen­ic Areas 4 Land­scape char­ac­ter 4 Wild­ness and Wild Land Areas 5 His­tor­ic land­scape 8 Sched­uled monu­ments 9 Gar­dens and designed land­scapes 10 Bat­tle­fields 10 Planned towns and Con­ser­va­tion Areas 10 Lis­ted build­ings 11 Build­ings at risk 11 Lin­guist­ic her­it­age 13 Pro­posed SEA object­ives 15

Ques­tions for con­sulta­tion authorities

1. Is there any­thing miss­ing from the Top­ic baseline?
2. Are there any errors in what is presented?
3. Are there any new ini­ti­at­ives, research pro­jects, plans, pro­grammes or strategies or oth­er things that will be report­ing / imple­men­ted over the next 12 – 18 months that are rel­ev­ant to the Top­ic, which may need to be included as the SEA progresses?

Con­text Land­scape is the shape and diversity to our sur­round­ings, the product of thou­sands of years of inter­ac­tion between man and nature, encom­passing the phys­ic­al and cul­tur­al envir­on­ment. Land­scape is import­ant, because it links cul­ture with nature, and the past with the present. Land­scapes also have a strong influ­ence on peoples qual­ity of life and the eco­nomy, and con­trib­ute to both nation­al iden­tity and loc­al dis­tinct­ive­ness. The pro­tec­tion of high qual­ity and highly val­ued land­scapes there­fore is import­ant both for its own sake and for the health, social and eco­nom­ic well­being of indi­vidu­als and communities.

At 4,528 square kilo­metres, and com­pris­ing 6% of Scotland’s land area, the Park is amongst the largest pro­tec­ted land­scape in the UK. The Cairngorm moun­tains are a mas­sif of expans­ive pro­por­tions and a sub-arc­tic envir­on­ment. There are no oth­er moun­tains like them in Bri­tain. The moun­tains dom­in­ate the Park and have an effect on the way people live and the land­scapes they live in. The land­scapes of the Park also include straths and glens, set­tle­ments and farms, wood­land, moor­land, rivers and lochs. Land­scapes change daily, sea­son­ally and year by year as the light changes, as crops are har­ves­ted, as trees grow, as houses are built and oth­ers fall into ruin and as rocks weath­er and erode.

The land­scape has been shaped by and includes evid­ence of past activ­it­ies and land uses. The cul­tur­al her­it­age of the Park includes ele­ments of the land­scape and built environment.

Spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Park land­scape The key char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the whole of the Park have been iden­ti­fied and described with­in dis­crete land­scape char­ac­ter areas. These areas are all dif­fer­ent but with­in each one there is a con­sist­ency of char­ac­ter influ­enced by dif­fer­ent factors such as the topo­graphy, land use, set­tle­ment and the way the land­scape is exper­i­enced. With­in the glens and straths there tends to be more diversity of land­scapes in a smal­ler area, where­as in the uplands the land­scape tends to be sim­il­ar over much lar­ger areas.

In 2010 work was con­duc­ted to identi­fy the ​‘Spe­cial Qual­it­ies’ of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park land­scape, car­ried out by SNH and the Park Author­ity. The spe­cial qual­it­ies iden­ti­fied reflect dis­tinct land­scape char­ac­ter­ist­ics and visu­al amen­ity and how these are exper­i­enced and val­ued with­in the Park.

Table I provides a sum­mary of the spe­cial qual­it­ies iden­ti­fied. Full details can be found in The Spe­cial Land­scape Qual­it­ies of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park via https://www.nature.scot/snh-commissioned-report-375-special-landscape-qualities- cairngorms-national-park.

Table I — sum­mary of the spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Park

Gen­er­al Qualities

• Mag­ni­fi­cent moun­tains tower­ing over moor­land, forest and strath.
• Vast­ness of space, scale and height.
• Strong jux­ta­pos­i­tion of con­trast­ing landscapes.
• A land­scape of lay­ers, from inhab­ited strath to remote, unin­hab­ited upland.
• ‘The har­mony of com­plic­ated curves’.
• Land­scapes both cul­tur­al and natural.

The Moun­tains and Plateaux

• The uni­fy­ing pres­ence of the cent­ral mountains.
• An impos­ing mas­sif of strong dra­mat­ic character.
• The unique plat­eaux of vast scale, dis­tinct­ive land­forms and exposed, boulder strewn high ground.
• The sur­round­ing hills.
• The drama of deep corries.
• Excep­tion­al gla­cial landforms.
• Snowscapes.

Moor­lands

• Extens­ive moor­land, link­ing the farm­land, wood­land and the high tops.
• A patch­work of muirburn.

Glens and Straths

• Steep glens and high passes.
• Broad, farmed straths.
• Renowned rivers.
• Beau­ti­ful lochs.

Cul­ture and History

• Dis­tinct­ive planned towns.
• Ver­nacu­lar stone buildings.
• Dra­mat­ic, his­tor­ic­al routes.
• The wist­ful­ness of aban­doned settlements.
• Focal cul­tur­al land­marks of castles, dis­til­ler­ies and bridges.
• The Roy­al connection.

Trees, Woods and Forests

• Dark and ven­er­able pine forest.
• Light and airy birch woods.
• Park­land and policy woodlands.
• Long asso­ci­ation with forestry.

Wild­life and Nature

• Dom­in­ance of nat­ur­al landforms.
• Extens­ive tracts of nat­ur­al vegetation.
• Asso­ci­ation with icon­ic animals.
• Wild land.
• Wild­ness.

Visu­al and Sens­ory Qualities

• Lay­ers of reced­ing ridge lines.
• Grand pan­or­a­mas and framed views.
• A land­scape of many colours.
• Dark skies.
• Attract­ive and con­trast­ing textures.
• The dom­in­ance of nat­ur­al sounds.

Recre­ation

• A land­scape of opportunities.
• Spir­itu­al­ity.

Nation­al Scen­ic Areas

Two Nation­al Scen­ic Areas (NSAs), the Cairngorm Moun­tains NSA and Deeside and Loch­nagar NSA, are loc­ated entirely with­in the Park bound­ary, largely centred on the highest moun­tain plat­eau at its core (fig­ure 1), but also includ­ing lower hills and areas of moor­land, wood­land and inhab­ited strath. Com­bined, the two NSAs cov­er an area of around 1,072 square kilo­metres, which equates to just under 25% of the land area of the Park.

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Fig­ure I — Nation­al Scen­ic Areas with­in the Park

(The third NSA is the Loch Tum­mel NSA, which very slightly over­laps the Park bound­ary at Kil­liecrankie, near Blair Atholl.)

Land­scape character

The whole of the Nation­al Park can be char­ac­ter­ised into dif­fer­ent land­scape char­ac­ter areas, belong­ing to either its Uplands or Glens and Straths (fig­ure 2).

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Fig­ure 2 — broad cat­egor­ies of land­scape char­ac­ter in the Park

With­in each area, although there may be vari­ation, there is a con­sist­ency of char­ac­ter formed by the topo­graphy, land use, his­tory, set­tle­ment and devel­op­ment as well as the way the land­scape is exper­i­enced. With­in the glens and straths there is more diversity of land­scapes in a smal­ler area, where­as in the uplands the land­scape tends to be sim­il­ar over much lar­ger areas.

Wild­ness and Wild Land Areas Wild­ness is a qual­ity exper­i­enced by people when vis­it­ing places of a cer­tain char­ac­ter. Meas­ur­ing wild­ness is inher­ently dif­fi­cult, as people respond dif­fer­ently accord­ing to their per­son­al exper­i­ence and their expect­a­tions of a place.

How­ever, SNH devised a meth­od­o­logy to object­ively con­sider wild­ness through four phys­ic­al attrib­utes being present. The attrib­utes were the per­ceived nat­ur­al­ness of the land cov­er; rug­ged­ness of the ter­rain; remote­ness from pub­lic roads, fer­ries or rail­way sta­tions and the vis­ible lack of build­ings, roads, pylons and oth­er mod­ern arte­facts. These attrib­utes were meas­ured and mapped before being com­bined to provide a meas­ure of rel­at­ive wild­ness (fig­ure 3)

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Fig­ure 3 – SNH rel­at­ive wild­ness map­ping for the Park

Based on the work car­ried out to meas­ure rel­at­ive wild­ness, SNH pub­lished a new map of Wild Land Areas, which rep­res­ent the most extens­ive areas of high wild­ness in Scot­land. Around 2,100 km², or 46%, of the Park has been iden­ti­fied as a Wild Land Area. Five areas have been iden­ti­fied with­in the Nation­al Park (fig­ure 4): Ran­noch — Nevis — Mamores — Alder, Cairngorms, Loch­nagar – Mount Keen, Braeroy — Glen­shirra — Cre­ag Mea­gaidh, and Monadhliath.

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Fig­ure 4 — Wild Land Areas with­in or over­lap­ping the Park

Areas 15 and 16 are almost entirely loc­ated with­in the Nation­al Park, while the oth­er three only just over­lap its boundary.

His­tor­ic land­scape The land­scape seen today is the res­ult of a com­plex inter­play of cli­mate, geo­logy, geo­mor­pho­logy, soil devel­op­ment, veget­a­tion suc­ces­sion and herb­i­vore impacts, along with human ele­ments linked to set­tle­ment, trans­port, farm­ing and forestry. Fig­ure 5 iden­ti­fies where his­tor­ic­al archae­olo­gic­al records, as held by the Roy­al Com­mis­sion on the Ancient and His­tor­ic­al Monu­ments of Scot­land and oth­ers, occur in the Park. These provide an indic­a­tion of where human activ­ity has occurred in the past.

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Fig­ure 5 — dis­tri­bu­tion of Nation­al Monu­ments Record sites in the Park

Although some still exists, much of the earli­est evid­ence of human activ­ity in the Park has been lost to sub­sequent human activ­ity. For example, sim­il­ar to the rest of rur­al Scot­land, the land­scape of the Park was trans­formed dur­ing the late-18^th and 19^th cen­tur­ies. The Improve­ment, as this peri­od was known, res­ul­ted in a revolu­tion in the agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices of the area, with the land­scape reor­gan­ised as reg­u­lar fields were laid out, farm stead­ings replaced, farms amal­gam­ated into lar­ger units and improved crop­ping regimes were intro­duced along­side oth­er meas­ures to improve pro­ductiv­ity, such as under­ground drain­age. In the uplands, the reor­gan­isa­tion saw the whole­sale depop­u­la­tion of the large areas to cre­ate large scale sheep graz­ings and shoot­ing estates.

The archae­olo­gic­al evid­ence found in the Park is of cul­tur­al sig­ni­fic­ance because it relates to areas or peri­ods for which there are no writ­ten records. It is there­fore of import­ance for under­stand­ing the devel­op­ment of the cur­rent landscape.

Sched­uled monuments

Sched­uled Monu­ments are nation­ally import­ant sites, build­ings and oth­er fea­tures of arti­fi­cial con­struc­tion giv­en leg­al pro­tec­tion under the Ancient Monu­ments and Archae­olo­gic­al Areas Act 1979 (His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land, 2019). There are 110 sched­uled monu­ments recor­ded with­in the Nation­al Park (fig­ure 6).

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Fig­ure 6 — loc­a­tion of Sched­uled Monu­ments in the Park

The Sched­uled Monu­ments in the Park rep­res­ent a diverse range of evid­ence of pre­vi­ous time. They include chambered buri­al cairns and asso­ci­ated stone circles of late Neo­lith­ic age, examples of Iron Age defens­ive remains such as the afore­men­tioned Dun-da-lamh hill fort, Pic­tish remains such as the 8^th cen­tury Loch Kin­nord Cross Slab, mil­it­ary struc­tures such as the 18^th cen­tury Han­overi­an fort of Ruthven, and indus­tri­al remains such as the 18^th / 19^th cen­tury iron­stone mine-crush­ing mill at the Well of Lecht.

Gar­dens and designed landscapes

There are II gar­dens and designed land­scapes with­in the Park that are iden­ti­fied on the Invent­ory of Gar­dens and Designed Land­scapes (table 1).

Table I — his­tor­ic gar­dens and designed land­scapes with­in the Park, by Loc­al Author­ity area

Aber­deen­shire	High­land	Perth and Kinross
Bal­mor­al Castle	Ault­more	Blair Castle
Can­dac­raig House	Castle Grant	Falls of Bruar
Glen Tanar	Doune of Rothiemurchus
Inver­cauld	Inshriach Nurs­ery
Kin­ara

With the excep­tion of Inshriach Nurs­ery, which is a spe­ci­men nurs­ery, all oth­er Invent­ory gar­dens and designed land­scapes relate to coun­try houses and estates.

Bat­tle­fields

There are two bat­tle­fields iden­ti­fied on the Invent­ory of His­tor­ic Bat­tle­fields, main­tained by His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land, the site of the battle of Crom­dale on 1^st May 1690, and the site of the battle of Kil­liecrankie on 27^th July 1689. The former bat­tle­field is in High­land, while the lat­ter falls with­in Perth and Kinross. The site of the Battle of Glen­liv­et (3^rd Octo­ber 1595) in Moray, falls just out­side of the Park bound­ary. It should be noted that not all bat­tle­fields with­in the Park are lis­ted in the Invent­ory, with the sites of the Battle of Invernhav­on (1370 or 1386) and Battle of Cul­blean (30^th Novem­ber 1335) being import­ant examples.

Planned towns and Con­ser­va­tion Areas

Planned towns are a fea­ture of 18^th and 19^th cen­tury Scot­land. The Park is con­tains five of import­ance: Bal­later, Blair Atholl, Tomin­toul, Grant­own-on-Spey and Kin­gussie. The lat­ter three were cre­ated as mar­ket towns for the sur­plus food that res­ul­ted from high­er pro­ductiv­ity on the increas­ingly pro­duct­ive farms. Town plans were drawn up and often spe­cified the type of house that the landown­er wished to encour­age. Com­par­at­ively spa­cious per­man­ent houses built of stone with slated roofs, glazed win­dows and usu­ally com­pris­ing a single storey and attic with three or five rooms were often pro­posed, all placed with­in a ration­al and care­fully thought out street plan. This is in dir­ect con­trast to the ad hoc dark, single-storey, single-room dwell­ings made from turf or rubble with a thatched roof that would have been more typ­ic­al in vil­lages at this time.

Parts of the planned towns of Bal­later, Grant­own-on-Spey and Blair Atholl have been des­ig­nated as Con­ser­va­tion Areas, which are pro­tec­ted under the Plan­ning (Lis­ted Build­ings and Con­ser­va­tion Areas) (Scot­land) Act 1997. The Park also has a fur­ther two Con­ser­va­tion Areas with­in its bound­ary at Brae­mar and Inverey.

Lis­ted build­ings The Park con­tains around 753 build­ings or struc­tures of spe­cial his­tor­ic or archi­tec­tur­al interest, which are pro­tec­ted under the Plan­ning (Lis­ted Build­ings and Con­ser­va­tion Areas) (Scot­land) Act 1997. Of these, 56 are with­in Cat­egory A, 341 in Cat­egory B and 356 in Cat­egory C. List­ing build­ings and struc­tures recog­nises their his­tor­ic import­ance and aims to safe­guard their archi­tec­tur­al and his­tor­ic value for the future.

Build­ings at risk The Build­ings at Risk Register (BARR) for Scot­land high­lights prop­er­ties of archi­tec­tur­al or his­tor­ic mer­it through­out the coun­try that are con­sidered to be at risk or under threat. A build­ing at risk is usu­ally a lis­ted or unlis­ted build­ing with­in a con­ser­va­tion area, which meets one or sev­er­al of the fol­low­ing criteria:

• vacant with no iden­ti­fied new use
• suf­fer­ing from neg­lect and/​or poor maintenance
• suf­fer­ing from struc­tur­al problems
• fire dam­aged
• unse­cured
• open to the elements
• threatened with demolition

To be at risk, a build­ing does not neces­sar­ily need to be in poor con­di­tion, it may simply be stand­ing empty with no clear future use. Many build­ings at risk are in this lat­ter cat­egory. From the latest avail­able data, 31 build­ings were recor­ded as being at risk in the Park (table 2).

Table 2 — build­ings on the build­ings at risk register in the Park

Build­ing	List­ing	Con­di­tion	Cat­egory of Risk	Date of Assessment
Bad­den Cot­tage; Thatched Cot­tage, Kincraig	C	Very poor	High	13 Novem­ber 2013
Cot­tage at Dal­na­hait­nach, Carrbridge	Unlis­ted	Poor	Mod­er­ate	28 June 2013
Cot­tage at Glen­ban­chor, Newtonmore	Unlis­ted	Very poor	Mod­er­ate	6 July 2012

Build­ing	List­ing	Con­di­tion	Cat­egory of Risk	Date of Assessment
Cot­tage & Ken­nels, Woods of Glen Tromie, near Kingussie	Unlis­ted	Fair	Low	July 2001
Braer­uthven, near Ruthven Bar­racks, Kingussie	Unlis­ted	Very poor	Crit­ic­al	20 July 2009
Croft Cot­tage, Blar­agie, Laggan	Unlis­ted	Very poor	High	20 June 2013
Upper Tul­loch­grue Farm, Aviemore	Unlis­ted	Very poor	High	28 June 2013
Old Crom­dale Church of Scot­land Manse Stead­ing, Cromdale	B	Very poor	Crit­ic­al	28 June 2013
Old Cruben­more Bridge, over River Tru­im, Newtonmore	B	Poor	Mod­er­ate	28 June 2017
17 – 19, Castle Road, Grantown-on-Spey	C	Poor	Low	28 June 2013
Gar­va­more Bar­racks; King’s House, Garva Bridge	A	Fair	Low	20 June 2013
55 Golf Road, Ballater	Unlis­ted	Fair	Low	7 August 2013
The Old School, School Lane, Ballater	C	Fair	Mod­er­ate	7 August 2013
Queen Victoria’s Pic­nic Lodge, Mar Lodge Estate, Braemar	C	Poor	High	6 August 2013
Derry Lodge, Mar Lodge Estate, Braemar	C	Fair	Mod­er­ate	6 August 2013
6 Castleton Ter­race, Braemar	C	Poor	Mod­er­ate	6 August 2013
St Margaret’s Epis­copal Church (Former), Castleton Ter­race, Braemar	A	Poor	Mod­er­ate	6 August 2013
Mitchell-For­bes Mauso­leum, Strath­don Church­yard, Bellabeg	B	Poor	Mod­er­ate	7 August 2013
Jeannie’s Mother’s House, Glenbuchat	C	Very Poor	High	7 August 2013
Dulax Farm Stead­ing, Glenbuchat	B	Poor	Mod­er­ate	7 August 2013
Dulax Farm­house, Glenbuchat	B	Very Poor	High	7 August 2013
Auch­er­nach House North Lodge, Auchernach	C	Poor	Mod­er­ate	7 August 2013
Auch­er­nach House Doo­cot, Auchernach	B	Very Poor	High	7 August 2013

Build­ing	List­ing	Con­di­tion	Cat­egory of Risk	Date of Assessment
Auch­er­nach House Walled Garden	B	Very Poor	High	18 August 2010
Begg’s House Stead­ing, Badenyon	C	Very Poor	High	7 August 2013
Cot­tage at Glen­ban­chor, Glenbanchor	Unlis­ted	Very Poor	Mod­er­ate	6 July 2012
Mill of Bellabeg, Bellabeg	B	Poor	Low	7 August 2013
Mill of Glen­buchat, Glenbuchat	B	Very Poor	High	7 August 2013
Begg’s House, Badenyon	B	Very Poor	High	7 August 2013
South Stead­ing with mill wheel, Scalan	B	Poor	Mod­er­ate	18 August 2015
North Stead­ing with stable and mill wheel, Scalan	A	Poor	Mod­er­ate	19 August 2015

How­ever it should be noted that the BARR does not include all build­ings at risk in the Park, just those that have been repor­ted to or iden­ti­fied by His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land. Some build­ings that may be of his­tor­ic­al mer­it and would oth­er­wise fall under the BARR cri­ter­ia, for example the former Stru­an Hotel in Car­rbridge, but have not been repor­ted or recor­ded, are not included.

Lin­guist­ic her­it­age Loc­ated near the centre of Scot­land, and owing to the restrict­ive nature of its moun­tain­ous ter­rain, the Cairngorms Nation­al Park occu­pies a pos­i­tion where many of the lin­guist­ic and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences found in Scot­land inter­sect. The lan­guage used in place names in the Park often has his­tor­ic­al mean­ing that describes the land­scape, place, wild­life or activ­it­ies that could or are still found there.

With­in the Nation­al Park two minor­ity lan­guages, both of which have under­gone sig­ni­fic­ant lan­guage shift towards Eng­lish, are still spoken: Scot­tish Gael­ic and Scots. The lan­guages belong to con­trast­ing lin­guist­ic families.

• Gael­ic, which was bought to Scot­land from Ire­land in around AD 500, was once spoken through­out the area. Though the 2011 recor­ded that the lan­guage was spoken by a very small pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion (around 2.2%, down from around 3.1% in 2001 Census) in the Park, it is a vis­ible and insep­ar­able part of the iden­tity of the area, as it con­tin­ues to dom­in­ate the names of places, both built and natural.
• Scots, which takes the form of its North­ern / North-east­ern dia­lect, Dor­ic, is also spoken in the Park, but is stronger in the east where the influ­ence of the low­lands is greatest. The lan­guage has also seen a fall in use, with around 5,400 (29.3%) of the Nation­al Park’s pop­u­la­tion claim­ing to be able to speak it in the 2011 Census.

Des­pite appar­ently hav­ing a great­er num­ber of speak­ers than Gael­ic, an ana­lys­is of the Scots lan­guage skills remains dif­fi­cult. For example, the 2011 Census was the first to col­lect inform­a­tion on the Scots lan­guage and there­fore no detailed inform­a­tion on trends is avail­able. Secondly, research car­ried out pri­or to the census sug­ges­ted that people vary con­sid­er­ably in their inter­pret­a­tion of what is meant by ​‘Scots’. It is there­fore likely that the census stat­ist­ics reflect a very broad defin­i­tion of the language.

Pro­posed SEA objectives

SEA main object­ive	Sub-object­ive
7a: Pro­tect and enhance the char­ac­ter, diversity and spe­cial qual­it­ies of the land­scapes of the Park	Will there be an effect on the spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Nation­al Park land­scapes? Will there be an effect land­scape char­ac­ter and loc­al distinctiveness?
7b: Pro­tect and enhance the char­ac­ter, diversity and spe­cial qual­it­ies of the land­scapes of the Park	Will there be an effect on the his­tor­ic and cul­tur­al envir­on­ment and assets (includ­ing linguistic)?