It appears that Wardle surrendered his lease to the authorities at this time, and that Tom Allmark, the works foreman, worked for the military, producing peat. They established a peat works, known locally at the Old Graveyard, near to Bettisfield Moss and the railway line. They clearly used tramways, since an auction sale of the works after the war ended included of Decauville railway track and 103 assorted wagons. It appears that the Old Graveyard Works was bought by a speculative company called The Bettisfield Trust Company. They obtained a lease from the Hanmer Estate in 1923, allowing them to work for black peat, which was peat at the lower levels of the bog. The Midland Moss Litter Company also obtained a lease for the same area, but they wanted to harvest the upper layers for packing material, cattle feed, and animal bedding. The two companies were required to cooperate under the terms of the lease. William Henry Smith, the former partner of Wardle, was a director of the Bettisfield Trust, but details of exactly what they did are unclear, and they may have established a processing works for making briquettes and distillation of the peat in the Fenn's Bank Brick and Tile Works, rather than at the Old Graveyard site. The enterprise was fairly short lived, as they ceased trading in late 1925. The Midland Moss Litter Company established a new works a little further along the railway line, although for a while both works were in operation. They introduced new working practices to the Moss, based on Dutch methods, and rebuilt the Fenn's Old Works in 1938 when the previous one was destroyed by fire. They introduced locomotives to the tramways in 1919, although the peat turves were always cut by hand, and of all the companies operating on the mosses, survived the longest. They continued working on the Moss until August 1962, but almost no documentary evidence for them is known to exist. The company was liquidated during a period when the demand for peat generally was in decline, and the site was bought by L S Beckett. Len Beckett had operated a small peat-cutting business, using Manor House, which his father had bought in 1933, as a base. He died young, and the business was bought by his brother-in-law, Tom Allmark, who could see the potential for peat in horticulture. In 1956 he bought of Whixall Moss from Wardle, bought Manor House in 1957, and soon afterwards, obtained a contract to sell peat to Cuthberts of Llangollen, which was sold as bulb fibre through the retail chain Woolworths.