546
	Norman Davidson
	1945

Forestry men and Timber Corps women at Lochloy

This photograph is courtesy of John Baillie, Garmouth who worked for some years in the Forestry (Home Grown Timber Production Department) from aged 14, helping with the felling of timber for the war effort. After the felling was finished at Oathillocks Camp area, he was posted in 1944/5 to a camp at Edenvale about one and half miles on Forres side of Dallas. The work area was at Loch Loy Forest or Estate between Nairn and River Findhorn, quite near to present day Culbin Forest. The man in charge of Timber Production at the time in this area and Darnaway was James McDonald from Brodie, universally known as ‘Tackets’.

The photograph shows a mixed group of Forestry men and Timber Corps women posing for the camera. There are six people on the back row and from the left John has named the first as Ella Watt from Dallas (holding a 6lb axe), 2nd Unknown from Glenlivet, 3rd Unknown, 4th John MacHardy from Elgin, 5th Unknown and 6th Unknown.
The front three from left are James Forsyth from Lessendrum, Unknown from Nairn and Charlie MacHardy from Elgin (He was the husband of the Timber Corps lady No 2 in Photograph No 286) holding a raker tooth cross cut saw.

There were two camps at Edenvale, one on either side of the road, consisting of timber dormitory huts with a heating stove in the middle. The one camp housed Forestry men and the other was occupied by about 18 women of the Timber Corps. About four other Timber Corps women lived locally in digs and regularly worked in Darnaway Estate. The rest of the Timber Corps women worked in the local woods with the men, cutting, snedding and loading timber. They formed semi permanent teams and tended to do the same job all the time, either using the cross cut saw to fell trees, axes to sned the felled trees or as part of a team hand loading the logs onto sledges, trailers, lorries and puggy trailer trucks. John also recalls that there was a Newfoundlander’s camp at Loch Loy about a mile from the main road into the forest but the conditions there were very crude, the huts being constructed from the off cut ‘backs’ from the mill.

Please check large version of photograph to see if you can name more people and also in John Baillie's other photographs. More names very welcome.


Picture Added on 28 November 2009.

If you found this interesting, have a look at the following groups of pictures.
Forestry Areas
Forestry in Action
Groups of people
Northeast Scotland
Tools and clothing
Women's Timber Corps - Timber Jills