Tintwistle Moor fire: gamekeepers tell how they held it for 11 days

Photographs: The Peak District Moorland Group

The gamekeepers who helped stop July’s Peak District wildfire have described what it took to hold the fire for 11 days and nights, and what it has cost them, their families and the estates they keep.

Four grouse keepers and the coordinator of the Peak District Moorland Group have set out how a fire that had been smouldering in the peat since late June reignited in the July heatwave and ran hard on its western flank, and how keepers volunteering around the clock alongside Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service and other fire and rescue teams brought it under control. Their account also lays bare the price being paid on the ground: death threats from the visitors they are trying to police, and a toll on family life and mental health that few outside the moors have seen.

The fire on Tintwistle Moor became the Peak District’s most serious since the Saddleworth disaster of 2018. Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service declared a major incident at around 11pm on Sunday 12 July as a change of wind drove the flames across tinder-dry moorland towards the neighbouring Stalybridge Estate. By the time it was contained the fire had consumed 2,500 hectares and left Greater Manchester and far beyond under smoke for weeks.

How a buried peat fire from June became a July major incident

For the keepers, the story began almost three weeks earlier. “We were aware of the initial fire at the end of June,” said Jonathan (Jonno) Simmonds, the single-handed keeper of the 3,000-acre Stalybridge Estate. The official cause remains under investigation. The visible flames were put out, but what was left was not a dead fire; it was a buried one, and for a fortnight the keepers watched smoke rising from the peat. “Burning peat with a predicted forecast of more heatwaves and strong winds is only going one way,” said Richard Bailey, coordinator of the Peak District Moorland Group and a gamekeeper for 33 years. “It’s a ticking time bomb.”

Jim Sutton, headkeeper of a 7,500-acre estate near the Woodhead Pass, was watching the same hotspots from across the valley and drew the same conclusion.

The reckoning came in the second week of July, when the buried fire met what firefighters call “fire wave” conditions: temperatures of 30°C, winds of 30mph and humidity of 30%. “Anybody with experience of wildfires will tell you that is a recipe for disaster,” said Richard, adding: “It was all predicted.” Even so, the fire behaved like nothing the keepers had seen. “It back-burned so far it went down into a valley, side-burned around the hill end, and then the wind got behind it and turned that into a fire front that burned back to where it started,” said Jim, a keeper of 30 years. “I’ve never seen a fire do a 360 like that.”

What 11 days and nights on the fire front took

At 6pm on 12 July, with the flames heading for his boundary, Jonno rang round the neighbouring estates. “We got the call: right, we need to go right now,” said Jim. “Off we went, and that was it until about half three the next morning.” What they walked into, he said, “is hell on earth – you’re choking, your eyes are full of soot and sparks. Until you’ve actually been in among it, you can’t describe it.”

That first night set the pattern for the 10 that followed. At its height 15 to 20 keepers worked day and night with seven or eight Argocats and buggies carrying water fogging units and carting water, backed by around 15 leaf blowers driving the flames back into burnt ground. Every one of them holds a Lantra wildfire training certificate, and several train Greater Manchester fire crews on moorland burning each winter. Qualifications matter, but on a fire like this it is experience of how moorland fire behaves, and of how to move across the ground, that counts for most. A rota between estates made sure no moor was left unmanned, even as the men went in by daylight and came out in pitch black over ground they barely knew. Crossing moorland at night is a skill in itself; for the moorland keepers it is second nature.

Scott Grainger, who keepers around 14,500 acres on the Snake Moors with two beatkeepers, arrived at 9.30pm on the Sunday and did not get home until 3.30am on the Tuesday. “Terrifying, and extremely upsetting” is how he describes it, adding: “To see the absolute devastation is heartbreaking.”

The men came off the hill unrecognisable. “We all looked like coal men,” said Scott. “Absolutely covered in soot, and exhausted – on these fire fronts there’s no respite. It’s just nonstop.” Jonno’s description was “black as the ace of spades”, the soot ground so deep into skin, hair and overalls that no amount of washing would shift the smell.

What the fire cost keepers’ families

Most were going home to young families. Scott’s daughters are 13 and 10. “There was a massive tearful hug from my youngest every night when I got home,” he said. “You could see it had clearly affected her.” His wife, managing childcare alone, had been distressed by WhatsApp footage of the men on the fire front. Jim France, who keepers a 2,500-acre moor near Glossop on the western fringe of the Peak District and has a son and daughter of 14 and 10, said family life suffers even between fires, because keepers are out patrolling for campfires every dry evening. “Where you might have grabbed an hour or two with your family at tea time, we’re just not getting that. We’re not seeing family like we used to. I am never at home.”

Why grouse moor management mattered when the fire came

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service has been generous in crediting the keepers’ role. None of that capability exists by accident. Every man on the hill was there because he manages a moor with a grouse shooting interest, almost all of them family or syndicate shoots rather than commercial operations, and it is grouse management that pays for the Argocats, the fogging units and the generations of burning experience the fire service drew on. “It is an absolute miracle that the whole of Stalybridge didn’t go up,” said Jim Sutton, “and it’s only down to the keepers on the ground and professional skills from all the fire and rescue teams involved.”

Recognition came from closer to home too. Micklehurst Cricket Club turned public donations into meals for the keepers and, within days, 30 Sundström face masks of the type the fire service recommends. The smoke reached far beyond the fire line: driving through Stalybridge one evening, Jim France’s truck switched its automatic headlights on in broad daylight, because the town had been sitting in smoke on an east wind for weeks.

The same estate teams had already turned out for the Ashop wildfire at the end of April, again backing Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service and the other Fire Operations Group partners with manpower, kit and experience.

The mental health toll after the Ashop fire

After the Ashop fire, Jim France, by his own account a resilient man, emailed his land agent and the estate’s owners to tell them he was struggling with his mental health. “I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in smoke and flame,” he said. “I’m not really an emotional person, but I found myself sat in tears two days after that fire.”

Campfires, threats and the policing nobody else does

What deepens the strain is the keepers’ conviction that far more could be done to prevent these fires in the first place. The Peak District is ringed by Manchester, Sheffield and Huddersfield, and on any dry weekend its moors fill with visitors. Most are respectful; many are not. Jim Sutton’s estate logged 40 to 50 incidents involving campfires, barbecues and the confrontations that follow in a single 48-hour period, and hired a two-man private security team at £600 a day after keepers were threatened with having their houses burnt down by illegal wild campers. Several of his staff considered resigning. “To be fair, this sort of work wasn’t in their job description,” he said.

Scott has had identical threats on his ground: “We’re going to blow your vehicle up. We know where you live. You’d better be careful of your family – all for simply saying, you’re not supposed to be having a fire here, please put it out.” He now forbids his staff from approaching campers alone. Most galling of all, the illegal behaviour did not pause even for the emergency: keepers coming off the moor after a day fighting flames found visitors trying to light campfires and barbecues that same evening, and the keepers’ WhatsApp groups filled nightly with photographs of fresh fires. On one neighbouring estate, keepers found the remains of a firework display on the moor; wooden no-fire signs have been chopped up with axes and burnt as firewood.

Burning restrictions and what rewetting cannot do

The keepers are just as frustrated by the rules they themselves must work within. Prescribed winter burning over deep peat, which historically created firebreaks across these moors, has been progressively restricted since 2018, when many estates signed a voluntary cessation, with legal limits following in 2021 and tightening again last year. Jim Sutton’s estate has not burnt heather on deep peat, which covers 99% of its ground, since 2018, yet it still keeps a £40,000 Argocat and fogging unit purely for wildfire emergencies. “Effectively, you’ve got estate owners funding a private emergency service,” he said.

The Government’s recommended alternatives fare little better in the keepers’ assessment. Cutting cannot reach steep, wet or rocky ground and leaves flammable brash lying where it falls, and it carries its own cost: Jim France’s estate has spent more than £80,000 on a tractor and cutting equipment to replace winter burns that previously cost £1,000 to £2,000 a year in labour and fuel. As for rewetting, he has overseen 17km of gully blocking on his own ground and values what it does for conservation, but he is adamant about its limits: “They are not a wildfire prevention method. You’re only rewetting one to two metres of peat around the dams. The rest is still dry, and the fire skips over and burns straight into it.” Richard points out that the individuals and organisations advocating landscape-scale rewetting say it will take up to 50 years to produce any meaningful change in the vegetation. The problem is that many of these moors are being hit by severe wildfires several times within a short span, and ground that has always been wet is now drying out every summer as the heatwaves come more often. Like Jim, Richard is not against blocking the old man-made drainage channels on moorland: wet areas are superb for insects and for the many ground-nesting birds that come to breed. His point is about the toolbox. He says: “If we are serious about wildfire mitigation we need to retain all the management tools and urge the policymakers to review the emerging science, not just staying entrenched in previous short-term reviews and papers, that has guided the policies we are now operating under.”

The western flank of this fire was finally halted at the boundary of a managed moor, where footage shows the flames being suppressed far more easily as they reached the unevenly aged mosaic of vegetation that marks managed ground.

Why the keepers feel unheard

The keepers have campaigned for years for more help in preventing these fires, and feel nobody is listening. “Everything we have said has fallen on deaf ears,” said Jim Sutton.

Jim France believes he knows why. “If we had a different job title and we weren’t associated with toffs in tweed, I think we would be listened to more,” he said. He has gone as far as retitling himself from headkeeper to conservation manager, and finds it remarkable how many more ears prick up in meetings for the second title where the first closed them.

One exception is Marie Tidball, the Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, who has been receptive on wildfire and is due to meet the keepers, “whenever it next rains”, said Jim Sutton. Scott’s demand of ministers is blunter: “I want a government official to come and physically have a look at what we’re having to deal with, especially around the anti-social behaviour issues, because it’s absolutely not recognised how bad it is. Something has to change. They cannot keep turning a blind eye.”

Counting the cost to wildlife and the moor

The full cost is still being counted. Keepers recovered dead mountain hare leverets and pre-fledging ground-nesting chicks too small to escape the flames. Stalybridge Moor, which burnt out in the 2018 Saddleworth fire and has never fully recovered, escaped this time, but Jonno is still checking his boundary twice a day; like the fire service, he knows what a peat flare-up can do if it is left.

How long the gratitude lasts is another matter. With the season under way, the keepers who spent July being hailed as heroes will go back, in some eyes, to being villains. Richard watched the same swing after Saddleworth in 2018: “It’s interesting how the pendulum moves – from being a hero to sadly being zero in the community in some people’s minds – when there’s no wildfire and keepers go back to being just keepers.” The past month ought to settle which they are. The next big fire is a matter of when, not if, and when it comes it will be the same men who tackle it, with their knowledge of fire, their specialist kit and a determination to protect ground that is far more to them than a workplace.