Women's Timber Corps in Glenkindie
Photograph courtesy of Margaret Angus (nee Stewart) formerly Pitlochry.
Margaret (extreme left)is sitting on the 3 ton Bedford lorry that she drove to take the cut logs and pit props to Riddochs Sawmill, Alford or railway station. Loading was by hand off skids. Note the vehicle headlamp covers to reduce light visibility to passing enemy aircraft (and also to the driver!!)
Margaret trained for the Timber Corps work on a 6 week training period at Shandford Lodge near Brechin and when she was allocated a lorry to drive she was sent to the all women Bogmuchals camp south of Portsoy (a collection of cold wooden huts) again for 6 weeks to learn how to drive, maintain and load her vehicle. The lorry was used also to bring in provisions into Glenkindie House and perhaps most mememorably as a liberty vehicle at weekends when it was filled with the girls heading to and from dances and cinemas at Huntly and surrounding villages. Rounding up the girls after a night out was often less than easy!
Next to Margaret Stewart is ? White and on the right possibly Alice Muir. (Jessie Malcolm -see comments below)
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Groups: Forestry in Action, Groups of people, Northeast Scotland , Timber lorries and loaders, Women's Timber Corps - Timber Jills
She is my mother ( married name Preston) and is now 92 and living in a nursing
home in West Lothian. Comment left on 01 February 2008 at 08:51 by Vivian Reid