Working in Glentress Forest Nursery
The image, courtesy of Ruth Robertson, Peebles is of two ladies weeding the lanes between the seed beds.
Ruth recalls that her sister Muriel and Muriel’s friend Helen Bruce, when students, worked for the summer months on Glentress Forest. The girls usually worked at weeding in the nursery and counting seedlings but were also called upon to fight fires on the railway banks, peel bark off poles, chop firewood and on one occasion had to stain the floors of two of the huts seen in the distance. The two ladies featured on this occasion are Muriel Robertson on the left and Margaret Ingles on right.
The huts seen behind did have a varied history. Initially erected as a labour camp in the early 1930s to house unemployed people placed on work schemes, they then served as a camp for Displaced Persons for a short period in WW2 and afterwards from 1946 were used to house the Glentress Forester Training School until 1953.
Groups: Forest Nurseries, Forestry Areas