Homewood Pitfichie Forest
The photographs were taken by Alastair Cassie, Deeside, who has a great interest in older forestry houses having grown up in one as a boy.
Here he has spotted a building in 2017 very similar to the one that his parents moved into as new at Alltcailleach Forest around 1950. The house was located a few hundred yards on the Alford side of the former Bennachie Forest Office built on the B993 Alford Juction to Monymusk road. The area the house was built on between the road and the former railway was certainly at one time owned by the Forestry Commission certainly up as far as the minor public road that crossed over the line leading to Tillyfourie and Pitfichie Forest. A 1952 compiled brief history of the forests of northeast Scotland including that of Pitfichie Forest (on this website) states that 12 houses were built by the Forestry Commission along the Aberdeen to Alford road. The 1961 Ordnance Map indicates two groups of three houses in the location as described above. Can anyone confirm if this house was built by the Forestry Commission around 1950 and who originally lived in it?
The attached PDF shows more views of the house structure with its thin walls and corrugated asbestos roof.
Alastair described his very similar house as follows: The foundations including dwarf walls were built with cement blocks. When complete the fished wooden flooring was added on to the top and then the timber frames for the walls erected. Steel lathe sheets were fixed on the external walls, scratch coated and harled by MacIntosh the Mason. The roof was boarded and finished off with corrugated asbestos sheets. The front and back porches were added as wooden frame structures covered with weather boarding. The inside walls were lined plastered and then painted with Distemper the non waterproof covering before the emulsion paint days.
A Triplex fireplace with oven was the main heat source but two of the three bedrooms had cast iron wood burning stoves and one bedroom had the cast iron chimney running up the inside of the room after emerging through an asbestos sheet. The back bedroom had the chimney flue on the exterior of the building. There was certainly no gas and electricity supply available.
The plumbing was very basic with hot water provided by a back boiler in the Triplex stove to a hot water tank and then piped to a simple sink and the basic toilet. The drains led to a concrete septic tank near to the house.
Groups: Buildings in Forests, Forestry Areas