Jonesville camp — Ballogie Estate 1953 Gale
This Scotsman Photograph is courtesy of the Scotsman, Edinburgh and Forestry Commission, Moray and Aberdeenshire Forest District who hold the image.
A view of part of the temporary camp, Jonesville, set up by James Jones and Sons at Ballogie Estate near Potarch Bridge to house timber and sawmill workers following the great gale of Jan 1953. There are few photographs of this camp as it is reported to have burnt down. Does anyone know the date?
For many decades the setting up of camps next to sawmills was a familiar sight as the mills moved from one large harvesting site to another where they could be located for perhaps a year or two. Steam driven engines and the saw benches were dismantled, moved lock stock and barrel to be re-erected and roofed at suitable locations on the next felling site. The workers and families hutted accommodation moved as well following the mill to the new site where the supply of water was a key consideration for human and steam engine consumption. Gordon Smith recalls that a double bench sawmill and accommodation units could be moved and re-erected in around 10 days, the journeys being undertaken on small lorries and or on trailers pulled by the steam engine. This mill and camp must have been about the very last of this experience as, following this period, mills in the forest were downgraded to single bench assemblies driven by a farm tractor and manned by only two or three people who had transport or lived in mobile caravans. Larger more sophisticated mills were being set up on permanent locations around the country as lorry transport, forest roads and loading systems improved ending the era of the mill going to the forest.
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Groups: Forestry Areas, Gale 1953, Northeast Scotland