Most visitors to Chatsworth House spend time in the 1000-acre parkland. Many of them might take a trip up through Stand Wood to the Hunting Tower. Some might even walk through the woodland up to Emperor Lake. However not many of them will venture further.

Most visitors aren’t aware that Chatsworth has a large moorland habitat on site - just the other side of the Chatsworth woodlands. It’s not a small moorland either. At nearly 3500 acres in size, it’s played an important role throughout history. With over 500 archaeological features, spanning prehistoric burial sites through to cairnfields and ritual monuments, it has been used by people for millennia and so is an internationally important cultural resource. More recently it has formed an essential part of the Chatsworth farming enterprise, providing key grazing land for our Luing Cattle and Swaledale Sheep.

Image: Luing Cattle

Contrary to what most people believe, there isn’t any shooting on Eastmoor; this ceased circa 20 years ago. Since 2012 it has been managed solely for its habitats and the species they host. It is also essential for the visitor operations at Chatsworth House and Garden, as the water from the moor feeds the Emperor Stream, which ultimately feeds the Cascade, the Emperor Fountain and the hydropower plant, before joining the River Derwent.

Known as Eastmoor, it provides nationally significant habitats and is home to species within a unique ecological, historical and cultural context. It has a unique mosaic of upland and lowland habitats, including blanket bog, wet heath, dry heath, wet flushes and successional woodland.

This habitat blend follows through to a diverse set of bird species using the site, from upland specialists such as Curlew, Snipe, Red Grouse and Meadow Pipit to lowland species such as Long-eared Owl, Grasshopper Warbler and Willow Warbler, and edge species such as Nightjar, Stonechat, Whinchat and Tree Pipit. Whilst the list is relatively diverse, the site has seen significant declines of some species within the last 10 years and there are some key species which are missing completely.

Images: 1 - Stonechat, 2 - Meadow Pipit, 3 - Curlew

In that time, we’ve also seen wildfire risk increase from the older heather degenerating, and increases in the extent of Birch, Bracken and Molinia grass. Together these are increasing the fuel supply annually as the vegetation becomes dry and brittle and the litter layer deepens and is exacerbated by the Birch which dry out the soil layers underneath, making the landscape itself drier. In recent years, Eastmoor has experienced drought on multiple occasions, and we’ve also had two wildfires in the last two years. With drier, hotter summers, we believe we are going to see more of these going forward.

Eastmoor also intersects 3 different watersheds; the Hipper which flows to Chesterfield, Beeley Brook which flows to Beeley, and Heathy Lea which flows to Baslow. These communities have experienced significant flooding multiple times over the last 10 years. It is important that we provide a multifunctional moorland ecosystem, which provides not just for farming, nature and recreation on the site itself, but also benefits communities who sit below the moor, but who are intrinsically linked to it.

We’re in the last year of a 3-year Eastmoor environmental study, where we’ve been identifying vegetation species, mapping peat depths and condition, and identifying where there is bare ground, erosion features or pest damage. We’ve also been working in partnership with the University of Manchester to undertake Greenhouse Gas flux monitoring, to understand what levels of carbon, methane and nitrous oxide the moorland is emitting, or whether it’s sequestering. Our in-house bioacoustic technology is monitoring what bird and bat species are using the moorland and why, and we’ve been monitoring the water table using dipwells and understanding how it changes with rainfall data, collected by our on-site weather station. Finally, our GIS team have been using their drone technology to map the Eastmoor landform and its watercourses.

Together this varied scientific data has allowed us to build up an environmental understanding of the condition of Eastmoor, and model what changes we can and need to make to improve its condition for the future.

Views across Eastmoor

Led by the Devonshire Group Natural Capital team, and with support from the Chatsworth Farms and Forestry teams, and Chatsworth House Trust Landscape team, in 2027 we will begin a new moorland management programme which we have crafted to achieve our vision for Eastmoor over the next 25-years. We want Eastmoor to be a climate resilient, multifunctional mosaic moorland landscape, which delivers for nature, people and heritage.

We’ve already reduced the number of sheep grazing and have introduced large graziers in the form of Luing cattle; a heritage breed, ideally suited for the tougher conditions. However, our experience over the last 8 years has confirmed that to adequately manage the vegetation from both a wildfire and biodiversity point of view, we need to increase grazing density. Subject to Natural England approval, we hope to do this by slightly increasing our cattle numbers and looking into the inclusion of ponies who will eat down the litter layer. We are already utilising the no-fence collar technology on the cattle, to encourage them to graze in certain areas, and keep them away from sensitive sites. This will be essential technology going forward to achieve our vision.

In addition to increasing grazing pressure, we’ll be using traditional moorland management techniques to manage the heather, such as cutting and controlled burning. We intend to use controlled burning to help us ‘reset’ the moor, after which, grazing and cutting will be the preferred management options. Controlled burning will only be undertaken on shallow peat (<30cm), sensitive archaeological sites or rocky ground where mechanical means are not possible, and to build in fire breaks to help us control wildfires.

Images: 1 - Fresh heather growth, 2 & 3 - Rewetting to create a mosaic, 4 & 5 - Sphagnum Moss

The combination of added grazing density and diversity, heather cutting and controlled burning will help to remove the dead litter layer, decrease the prevalence of species like Molinia and Bracken, and provide the space and conditions for the growth of other moorland plants, such as Bilberry and Cranberry. In turn, these will reduce the wildfire risk associated with these habitats.

We’ve been working with Trent Rivers Trust and the Environment Agency to find suitable sites for installing natural flood management and moorland restoration interventions (such as leaky barriers and wool bunds). This work has identified over 150 interventions on Eastmoor and surrounding areas that can be installed on natural watercourses. We intend to install these interventions, and continue to scope out additional opportunities, particularly in the Molinia and Bracken areas where new innovative moorland restoration measures might be applied. This work will increase the water holding capacity of the moorland so that the risk of wildfire is reduced over time and provide the space for moorland species (like sphagnum mosses) to establish. It will also allow the broader habitats and species to become more resilient and provide us with better regulation of the water entering Emperor Lake for the visitor operations.

To ensure we are making the right management decisions going forwards, we’ll also continue to monitor Eastmoor using our scientific measuring and monitoring techniques and tweak our decisions to ensure we’re getting the best results to achieve our long-term vision.