Ed March-Shawcross

Ed March-Shawcross is the Moor to Restore Officer at the North York Moors National Park Authority. He runs the multi-year programme to rewet drained moorlands, restore peat-bog hydrology, and reverse decades of agricultural drainage from the 1940s and 1950s. He sits at the centre of a network that includes hill farmers, gamekeepers, grouse moor estates, traditional moorland practitioners, and the four still-active Court Leets in the National Park.

He is also a scout leader, a mountaineer running a CIC of his own, and the nephew of a travel photographer.

A long Zoom conversation on 29 April 2026 mapped the human terrain of the North York Moors for the archive. Ed identified the Court Leet system as a thread the archive had not seen and offered to introduce the Bailiff at Fylingdales (Loll Hodgson) and the educational visits team. He named the last active peat cutters (John Drew and the Thompson family at Plum Tree Farm) and offered to verify whether they are still cutting. He offered warm introductions to John Clark at the National Gamekeepers Association, to Nina in NYMNPA Comms once their May conference is past, and to colleagues at Ryedale Folk Museum who are working on a heritage crafts hosting strategy.

He also raised, unprompted, the question of NYMNPA potentially using TEA as a hosting partner for the documentary record of the moors and its people - a conversation that will continue with Nina after the May conference.

The archive’s North York Moors coverage rests on this conversation.