We use peat today as a fertiliser in our gardens but for centuries, in rural communities in Scotland and Ireland, peat was used as fuel for warmth and cooking. By its nature, it’s full of moisture and heavy and digging it out of the ground was back-breaking work. It then had to be stacked to dry and finally transported either to sell or for your own use. And, to make matters worse, it was a dirty, smelly fuel to use. Today, peat-extraction is a highly mechanised process and we are so fortunate that when we want to cook or heat our houses, we simply flick a switch or turn a knob.

Enjoy this original photograph from our archive. It is low resolution and has a ‘keasbury-gordon.com’ watermark. Our NFT photo-art images are higher resolution (300 dpi) with no watermark. Please subscribe to be notified when Keasbury-Gordon photo-art is offered for sale.