Why Are There Lonely Scots Pines Beside Old Welsh Farmhouses?

All over rural Wales, beside old farmhouses and lonely inns, on ridges where no other tree grows, stand small clumps of tall, dark Scots pines. Three here, five there. Who planted them, and why? The drovers, as the old story says? Landowners caught up in the eighteenth-century craze for planting? Farmers sheltering their houses from the north wind? Or are some of them survivors of a native Welsh pine forest that was supposed to have disappeared thousands of years ago? In this film we stand beside one farmhouse at the head of a Radnorshire valley and test seven explanations, from Breidden Hill to Hafod, and finish with a simple guide to reading any clump of pines you pass. SOURCES The Holocene (2021), Scots pine dynamics in the Welsh Marches: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1... Dictionary of Welsh Biography, Thomas Johnes: https://biography.wales/article/s-JOH... Herefordshire Through Time, Droving: https://htt.herefordshire.gov.uk/here... Trinity College Dublin, Scots pine in the Burren: https://naturalscience.tcd.ie/news/20... Climate-ADAPT, the Pontbren project: https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/ Our farmer Morgan is a composite character. Folklore in this video is presented as tradition, not as historical fact. Is there a clump of pines by your farm or your village? Tell us where in the comments. #Wales #WelshHistory #ScotsPine #Drovers #Cymru