Fox Farm Ardross Forest circa 1958
Photographs courtesy of John Keenleyside, Forres, who was stationed as an assistant Research Forester at Ardross in the 1950s. After a stint in the infamous Dublin Bothy and following its closure John lodged at Fox farm which was the FC house of the assistant forester at Ardross Forest.
Hamish Reid and his wife Dollag lived here at the time and his official form of transport was a BSA Bantam motorcycle which was housed in an official garage alongside. The picture shows Fox Farm in Summer. Any information on this building would be very welcome.
The photographs in the PDF shows the same house following a heavy snowfall, possibly the same as remembered by Don MacLeman in earlier photographs on this site. John recalls the day well as it fell heavily all day and at the end of work day had to abandon his bicycle and walk back to his lodgings at Fox Farm. In the deep snow and wind he doubted at times if he was going to make it and was only just able at the last moment to see a dull blurred light of the house. Plunging on through knee deep snow he was eventually able to make it to safety.
The other photograph is of Adrian Bartlett standing beside a large snowman. Adrian was the youngest son of Geoff Bartlett the Research Forester for the North of Scotland.
Mid Ardross was formerly an old school and school master’s house. The left side of the semi-detached building provided the Head Forester’s accommodation and the office for running Ardross Forest. The right hand end was the Research Forester’s house (Geoff Bartlett and family) also with an office which was an eight by six shed complete with wood burning stove and Tilley lamp!
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Groups: Forest Research, Forestry Areas
Local people knew of the enterprise in my day 1957-61. A Ranger lived in the other house, Roddie Matheson, who had seen a silver fox in the wild near here but I never saw one.
All that I remember of the enclosure was that the forest and research used the area to sheugh in plants that arrived from the tree nurseries because it was rabbit free. It was a hard task creating new sheughs because of the netting in the ground and a very sharp spade was necessary to make any progress. Forest Research had no new plantings in Ardross Forest but the young trees could end up in trial plots from Strome Ferry to the Black Isle or even North to Caithness or Sutherland. They were usually distributed by trailer behind a Landrover. That is my memory of Fox farm which perhaps should have been more correctly called Silver Fox Farm as that was the aim to produce Silver Fox Furs for the Fashion Trade.
John Keenleyside Assistant Research Forester 1957-61.
Comment left on 26 September 2014 at 08:15 by Norman Davidson