12 AUGUST 1989, Page 20

Kirkhouse

The whinstone sheepfold's been submerged by spruce, Now they've put Kirkhouse Moor to commercial use.

In thirty years, they'll pick up a return On their plantatiRn leagues by Paddock Burn, When the spruce is felled, once fully black and grown, (The sheepfold long since gone to heaps of stone).

Accountants costed what their Board would gross: The trees their profit — and the moor our loss.

So spruce-rows and gouged ditches, straight as dies, Stain and deform each hill. It's enterprise.

That change is certain, is a truth as old As truths the sheepfold stood for, and now sold.

Simon Curtis