at Westhay Westhay Moor originally lay at the centre of the most northerly of the two lowland raised bogs that formed in the lower
Brue Valley. They reached their greatest extent at the end of the
Iron Age. The
Neolithic people exploited the reedswamps for their natural resources and started to construct wooden
trackways such as the
Sweet and
Post Tracks. The Sweet Track, named after the peat digger who discovered it in 1970 and dating from the 3800s BCE, is the world's oldest
timber trackway, once thought to be the world's oldest engineered roadway. The track was built between what was in the early 4th millennium BCE an island at
Westhay and a ridge of high ground at
Shapwick, close to the
River Brue. The remains of similar tracks have been uncovered nearby, connecting settlements on the
peat bog including the Honeygore, Abbotts Way, Bells, Bakers, Westhay and Nidons trackways. The
archaeology,
history and
geology of the
Somerset Levels was displayed at the
Peat Moors Centre until its closure in 2009. The centre also included reconstructions of some of the archaeological discoveries, including a number of
Iron Age round houses from
Glastonbury Lake Village, and the Sweet Track. The eastern part of the moor was covered by
Meare Pool which was formed by water ponding-up behind the
raised peat bogs between the Wedmore and the
Polden Hills, and coring has shown that it is filled with at least of detritus mud, mainly dating from the
Subatlantic climatic period (1st millennium BC). In prehistoric times there were two
Meare Lake Villages situated within the lake, occupied at different times between 300 BCE and 100 CE, similar to the nearby Glastonbury Lake Village. Early drainage work was carried out in the later years of the 12th century, with the responsibility for maintaining all the watercourses between Glastonbury and the sea being placed on named individuals among whom were Ralph de Sancta Barbara of Brentmarsh. Drainage of the surrounding area by monks of
Glastonbury Abbey had reduced the size of the lake to at the time of the
Dissolution of the Monasteries. Meare Pool had disappeared from maps by 1749. The Meare Pool originally collected the waters of the rivers
Brue and
Sheppey, and discharged in a northerly direction into the
Lower River Axe. Further reclamation was carried out in stages between about 1620 and 1740, with the "new Cutts" (or Decoy Rhyne) being built about 1660. The rivers Sheppey and
Hartlake were canalised into the River James Wear and Division Rhyne sometime in the late 1730s. In 1795,
John Billingsley advocated
enclosure and the digging of
rhynes (a local name for drainage channels, pronounced "reens" in the east and rhyne to the west) between plots, and wrote in his
Agriculture of the County of Somerset that had been enclosed in the last 20 years in
Wedmore and
Meare, at Nyland, at Blackford, at
Mark, in
Shapwick, and at
Westhay. In the 1810s
Samuel Galton Jr. showed that bogs could be drained and dressed with clay and other soil, and built Galton's Canal. Galton's Canal was a
canal with one
lock, connecting the
River Brue to the
North Drain. It was operational by 1822, and ceased to be used after the 1850s. The land is drained by a series of
rhynes, or ditches with water levels (and hence the level of the
water table) being controlled by a system of
sluice gates and pumps. The
water resource management operations are managed by the Somerset
internal drainage board. In the early 18th century several
duck decoys were built on the moor. These consisted of a pool of water leading from which are from one to eight curving, tapering ditches. Over each ditch is a series of hoops, initially made from wood, later from iron, which diminish in size as the ditch tapers. The hoops are covered in netting. The combination of ditch and net-covered hoops is known as a pipe.
Peat extraction in 1905. Large areas of
peat were laid down on the
Somerset Levels, particularly in the
River Brue Valley, during the
Quaternary period after the ice sheets melted.
Peat extraction on the Somerset Levels has occurred since the area was first drained by the
Romans. The raised bogs were extensively dug for
peat for use as fuel up until the end of
World War II after which the primary market was for horticulture. Large parts of Westhay Moor have now been dug back to the underlying clay exposing estuarine deposits dating from about 6000 BP before isolation from the sea and peat formation began. The introduction of plastic packaging in the 1950s allowed the peat to be packed without rotting, which led to the industrialisation of peat extraction during the 1960s as a major market in
horticultural peat was developed. However, the resultant reduction in water levels that resulted put local
ecosystems at risk; peat wastage in pasture fields was occurring at rates of over 100 years. In 1970 the
Somerset Wildlife Trust bought the first part of the last of acid raised bog vegetation left on the Somerset Moors undamaged by peat digging or agriculture. Since then SWT have bought or been given of former peatworkings. These were sculpted and restored to wetland as the experimental area for the Avalon Marshes. This was the term given in the late 1980s to describe the wetland restored from peat workings in the Brue Valley. The wetland on the clay is dominated by
Phragmites reed,
catstail and open water. The wetland restoration has been a great success and was declared a National Nature Reserve in 1995. Peat working is now beginning to draw to a close on Westhay Moor and the majority of the remaining peatworkings are now being restored to wetland as they are completed. In 2014 two land owners unsuccessfully appealed against changes in planning permission which removed their rights to dig peat from Westhay Moor. ==Ecology==