Back in the days of William the Conqueror much of the forests around Macclesfield and Leek became the hunting reserve of the Earls of Chester and this area included Gun Hill (now Gun Moor Nature Reserve).

Around 1214 Earl Ranulf decided to save his soul by founding an abbey just outside Leek, Dieulacres Abbey. About 15 years later he granted Dieulacres extra land and some of this was on Gun. On its slopes the monks were able to graze their sheep and around the top they hunted small game. After the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, much of the land on Gun Hill became common land where the locals could let their animals roam. A couple of significant roads also crossed the moor; the ‘Great Road’ was a long-distance drovers’ road from Chester to Derby and a packhorse track, the ‘Trusseway’, connected Macclesfield and Leek – and it was along this latter road that Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army passed in 1745 on his way to Derby.

But it was really the enclosures of the early 19^th century that started the transition to the moor as we know it today. In the Leek Inclosure Act of 1805 Edward Trafford Nicolls of Swythamley gained some 87 acres on the top of Gun on the Leekfrith side (as well as some land on the Roaches) and in 1820, as result of the Heaton Inclosure Act of 1816, he was allotted another 42 acres on Gun hill on the other side of the parish boundary. His Leekfrith portion became part of his shooting estate, but his Heaton allotments were incorporated into Gun End Farm.

Not long afterwards, in 1832, Nicolls sold his Swythamley Estate, including his land on Gun to John Brocklehurst of Macclesfield, a leading silk manufacturer at the time. And it was really under his grandson, Philip Lancaster Brocklehurst, that the moor became what it is today. From the 1860s onwards he acquired more land up on the top of Gun from others who had benefitted from the enclosures. That included Captain Ryley’s tree planation and the Hulme’s New Zealand Farm, where they had built additional stone walls and made a valiant attempt to farm the land. We can still see the results of their endeavours today. Philip Brocklehurst’s gamekeepers maintained all this land for grouse shooting and extended it into most of the Heaton part of Gun hill.

In 1920 Philip’s son, Sir Philip (father had been made a baronet in 1903, a year before he died) decided to try and sell the outlying potions of his Swythamley Estate. Gun Moor, ‘a noted grouse moor of 214 acres’, was offered for sale with a keeper’s cottage (New Zealand farmhouse) as a single lot. In the event it didn’t sell. However, the remaining small portion of the land in Heaton which had been enclosed in 1820, was sold to the sitting tenant of Gun End Farm.

Sir Philip continued to use Gun Moor for shooting for the rest of his life, usually spending a full day on The Roaches followed by half a day on Gun. This might not have been the case had the search for oil on Gun been successful in the 1930s. The D’Arcy Company spent almost a year and £20,000 drilling down to 4,000 foot but all to no avail.

The Swythamley Estate was finally sold off in 1977, after Sir Philip’s death. This time Gun Moor did sell and was bought by a local sheep farmer, though without the shooting rights. Luckily the sheep weren’t there for long and in 2019 the land was acquired by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, funded by the generosity of supporters who donated to a fundraising campaign to pay off the loan taken out for the purchase. Since then the Trust have been very pleasantly surprised by the wide variety of wildlife and habitats they have found on the Gun; more than even they had expected. However, that other little bit of land on Gun hill which had been enclosed in 1820 by the Heaton Inclosure Act – a field of just under seven acres on the road between Whiteshaw and Isle – had remained as part of a farm.  Ownership had, however, been transferred from Gun End to back to the Estate and the tenant at Whiteshaw by the time of the 1977 auction. It was sold off as a separate lot when Whiteshaw was put up for auction in 2016 and bought by someone to pasture their horses. A brief survey several years ago had revealed quite a lot of interesting flora and wetland, making it an ideal complement to the rest of the Moor. So when the Trust had an opportunity to buy it in June 2022 this year they jumped at the chance.  

If you’re interested in learning more, Alan will be joining Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s Senior Land Management Officer, Jon Rowe to give a talk titled 'Gun, Past & Present' at the Swythamley Centre on Tuesday, 11th October at 7:30pm. Cost for attendance is £3.00. Please contact Alan directly to book a space. alanlweeks@gmail.com / 01260 227683. He'll also be hosting the 'Gun Past' talk later in April 2023 in Leek.

For directions to the Swythamley and Heaton Community Centre please follow the instructions on their webpage: http://swythamleycentre.org.uk/whereweare.html