In April 2012 the BBC programme "Countryfile" featured the story of the lost farms of Brinscall moor, numbering about 50. The tenant farmers were encouraged to move out when the land was acquired under compulsory purchase order, in 1902, by the Liverpool Corporation Waterworks, which needed to secure a source of pure drinking water. The corporation proceeded to plant trees across large areas of land on the moor. This deliberate afforestation effectively removed the pasture for the farms' sheep grazing and by the 1930s all the farms had been deserted.