Dendrochronicle

Join us to explore Dendrochronology and historic timbers in Dunbar. Free event but booking essential.

Every timber tells a story: Exploring dendrochronology in Dunbar Join experts Coralie Mills and Hamish Darrah for an afternoon exploring dendrochronology and historic woodworking on the High Street.

Delighted to be invited to write this guest blog for Historic Environment Scotland.

Celebrating ! 🌲

We’re marking the day by highlighting six incredible tree‑ring (dendrochronology) discoveries from across Scotland.

In a brand‑new blog, Dr Coralie Mills, dendrochronologist and founder of Dendrochronicle, shares some of the most fascinating findings of her career - from medieval church roofs to long‑lost shipwrecks uncovered by winter storms.

These tiny tree rings have helped reveal hidden histories, rewrite timelines, and uncover stories from Scotland’s forests, buildings and coastlines.

Curious to see what the trees had to tell us? 🌳
Read the full blog here:
https://ow.ly/lYJW50YwVUA

Delighted to write this guest blog for Historic Environment Scotland

Celebrating ! 🌲

We’re marking the day by highlighting six incredible tree‑ring (dendrochronology) discoveries from across Scotland.

In a brand‑new blog, Dr Coralie Mills, dendrochronologist and founder of Dendrochronicle, shares some of the most fascinating findings of her career - from medieval church roofs to long‑lost shipwrecks uncovered by winter storms.

These tiny tree rings have helped reveal hidden histories, rewrite timelines, and uncover stories from Scotland’s forests, buildings and coastlines.

Curious to see what the trees had to tell us? 🌳
Read the full blog here:
https://ow.ly/lYJW50YwVUA

This has been such a joy to work on with Borders Forest Trust

🌳 Dairy Wood: A Living Archive of Scotland’s Woodland Past 🌳

We are delighted that our work at Dairy Wood has just been featured as a showcase article by the Royal Scottish Forestry Society! This rare, historic wood pasture near Moffat - now part of our Ericstane North site - is revealing its story through dendrochronology, ecological surveys and historic mapping. Dairy Wood is a home for wildlife such as barn owls, redstarts, nuthatches and jays, with veteran trees, wooded cleuchs, and even the ghost of a lost township!

This collaborative project - with Coralie Mills of Dendrochronicle and our own Nicola Hunt and Catriona Patience - is helping us preserve and enrich Dairy Wood’s ecological and cultural heritage.

The article is now freely available for anyone to read! 💚
Access it here:https://www.rsfs.org.uk/documents/showcase/v79e01-2025-mills.pdf

Our sincere thanks to the funders of this project: Future Woodlands Scotland, , Destination Tweed UK, and The Woodland Trust. 💚

📸 Photo credit: Catriona Patience

Absolutely thrilled to be part of the Dendrochronology team for this fantastic regeneration project by The Ridge in Dunbar

It was a pleasure to give this talk for the excellent Dumfries & Galloway Woodlands last year. Link below for the recording on YouTube

🌳🌳🌳Knowledge (K)November is coming!!! 🌳🌳🌳

Yes - so good that they named it...once...

A series of fun and free online events on consecutive Tuesday evenings in November, each giving a slightly different way to think about the woodlands in our region. With speakers from across the UK, the events are delivered in an engaging and accessible way, and suitable for all.

Watch this space for info coming soon + how to book your spot...

(Image from the excellent Dendrochronicle event last November - missed any of our events? They all end up on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/)

The Knowledge (K)November events, and in fact everything we do, is possible thanks to partners and particular support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund Scotland

The recovery, analysis, dating and ultimately the identification of this wreck has been a fantastic team effort with Wessex Archaeology and the Sanday Community. Dendrochronicle’s Hamish Darrah undertook the emergency sampling mission with Ben Saunders of . The timber samples were dendro-dated and provenances by Coralie Mills of Dendrochronicle.,Delighted to work with the team from Wessex Archaeology and the Sanday community

Take a closer look at the wreck of an 18th century ship that was dashed upon the shores of Orkney in 1788… ⚓ Last year, winter storms revealed a very well-preserved shipwreck hidden on the shores of Sanday in the Orkney Islands, and the question of its identity piqued interest around the globe. Our Senior Marine Archaeologist Ben Saunders quickly joined the community team on site and observed that large wooden pegs, known as ‘treenails’, had been used in the construction of the hull. This construction method hinted at a potential date of the 17th or 18th century, but further exploration was needed. Scientific analysis of the timbers from Dendrochronicle has now confirmed these suspicions, providing a range of felling dates between 1748 and 1762 for some and 1750’s-1780’s for others. On top of that, testing established that the wood had been sourced from the south and southwest of England, giving community researchers a starting point in the quest for the ship’s identity. Armed with this knowledge, our team spent several months working with community researchers and the Sanday Development Trust Heritage Centre exploring archives across the UK and Europe to find the most likely candidate for the ship, now believed to be the Earl of Chatham. Explore the wreck for yourself with our 3D model: https://ow.ly/knTh50Wtrn4 #Archaeology #Shipwreck #18thcentury

A few weeks ago of and I were interviewed by Mark Stephen for the BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors programme, sitting beside one of the remarkable old trees at BFT’s Dairy Wood site at Ericstane near Moffat. The interview is about our work researching the age of the trees and the history of the wood, and why.

The interview was broadcast on Saturday 31 May and is available as a podcast version https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002cz2v

The interview is in two sections, just after 31 minutes and 1hour 14 minutes in. Hope you find it interesting. Huge thanks to everyone who has helped with this work.

BBC Radio Scotland - Out of Doors, Dendrochronology, Drones and a Dancing Gardener Mark Stephen and Rachel Stewart with stories from the great outdoors.

Really looking forward to running this workshop with Borders Forest Trust … more details and booking info at link in post below 🌳💚