Lindow Man’s bog to be spared landfill and restored

THE peat bog where the Iron Age Lindow Man was found is to be restored after plans to fill it with landfill were abandoned amid environmental fears.

Under agreements made in the Fifties and Sixties, Lindow Moss, where the famous “bog body” was discovered in 1984, had been due to be filled with inert waste and turned over to agriculture.

After decades of being stripped for horticulture, peat extraction has stopped and restoration plans will start next spring after planning permission was granted for 14 eco-homes, with the proceeds funding the bog’s restoration.

The owners, who began extracting from the bog in 1997 under their company Croghan Peat, struck a deal with Cheshire East council to use proceeds from the properties to fund the bog’s restoration to a carbon sink, which can help the UK fight climate change.

Lindow Man, now in the British Museum, is the UK’S best-preserved “bog body”. Thought to have been violently killed in around the first century AD, he was found by commercial peat cutters before being unearthed by local archaeologist Rick Turner.

John Handley, a local restoration ecologist and Professor Emeritus at Manchester University, said: “We think, potentially, this could be one of the most important wetland restoration projects in England.”

The project can fulfil Mr Turner’s wishes for the landscape to be restored to one Lindow Man would have recognised. Mr Turner died in 2018, but in a 2014 speech he called for the bog’s restoration. “The choice is between a landfill site covered by dull ryegrass fields or a vibrant habitat buzzing with unusual plants and animals,” he said.