The industrial extraction of peat from Thorne Moors which began during the early 20th century was finally halted following the purchase of the area from a US based conglomerate in 2002 by the UK government and English Nature as part of a multi million pound agreement. Paleoenvironmental analysis of Thorne moors as part of the Humber Wetlands Project indicates a history of anciently wooded land which began to develop as a 'raised mire' as a result of increasingly boggy conditions around 3300 BC (Fletcher 2003, 2). Mire and peat development continued largely uninterrupted until the post-medieval period when drainage works and dyke networks began to interfere with the hydrology of the moors. The present network of dykes and drains dividing the moor into a geometric grid date to the early twentieth century and are largely related to the industrial extraction of peat. These superseded earlier drains probably dating to the drainage works of Vermuyden in the 17th century and others in the 18th and 19th centuries. The 'Isle of Axholme Historic Landscape Characterisation Project' (Miller 1997, 70) describes Thorne Moor as within its zone of "Raised Mire and Turbary". "[During] medieval and post-medieval times, the peat moorlands were used by the surrounding communities for rough grazing and as a source of peat or turf" (ibid), with wood, fish and wildfowl also sourced from the moors which functioned during drier periods as common grazing land. The moors are now managed for nature conservation, with large areas regenerating as wet woodland but retaining significant legibility of their former use as extractive sites.