Abergeldie – site of former Canadian Forestry Corps Camp
Alistair Cassie kindly accompanied and showed the location of the camp in among the trees below the south Deeside Road.
Not easy to see among the bunches of heather and birch trees but clearly visible on site is this flat bottomed shallow depression (3-4 feet deep) in an otherwise table flat land. Most likely the logging pond for the No 22 and 24 Company sawmill.
The area of land at the far end had been bulldozed very flat and there were signs of base fixing and metal spikes indicating a sizable base for a building and could well be the actual mill shed site. The image in the attached PDF. The photographs on Bob Briggs website does unfortunately not show a pond but it would be unusual if there was none as water could be sourced nearby.
Abergeldie Camp was manned by Nos 22 and 24 Companies of the Canadian Forestry Corps, No 22 Company arriving in Ballater 20 Jan 1942. Men from Companies 2, 3, 4, 13 and 16 assisted with construction of the camp from late 1941. No 24 Company arrived at Abergeldie on 30 March 1942. On 31 March 12 new lorries were being acquired from Blair Atholl CFC depot for Abergeldie and Mar Lodge camps. By mid 1944 the two Companies had moved on.
Wood product production figures are below. Normally two Companies would have consisted of up to 400 men resulting in what must have been a large camp and required an extensive are of mature forest to work in continuously for over two years. The OS map revised in 1923 shows extensive conifer areas on the areas known as Tom Mor next to the river Dee and also across the South Deeside road on Creag Ghuibhais hill which surrounded the mill site. Slightly further afield are yet more forested areas also on the Royal Estate from where timber could well have been transported by timber truck. There is a suggestion in early Jun 1944 that there were some moves to combine the two companies in to one and it may be that number of men latterly was much less than the normal for two companies.
The product production figures are quoted in units as stated and very approximate conversion to cubic metres have been added:
Sawn lumber 18,134,813fbm (42,970m3)
Lagging 66Tons (70m3)
Tonnage wood 13187tons (1,450m3)
Pulpwood 2420tons (2,660m3)
Pit Props 28tons (30m3)
Slabs 11972 tone (13,160m3)
Logs / Boatskins 10429cuft (270m3)
Poles 3871 (900m3)
Total is approx 61,300m3 or roughly 55,700tonnes or perhaps between 200 and 300 hectares of forest cleared (very roughly as the quality and quantity of trees per hectare are unknown). Whatever the figure the whole operation will have involved enormous hours of hard manual labour particularly on axe and saw but also on loading, handling logs on saw benches, shifting loading and unloading all the various products at mill stock yards, onto and off lorries and finally onto train wagons or harbours quays.
Very much indebted to Bob Briggs and his website for much of the detail and to Alistair Cassie for guidance to the site.
To see more detail of Abergeldie Camp, the men and officers who worked at the camp click on Bob Briggs very comprehensive website which gives a great wealth of detail, names, photographs, documents and stories of that time:
More details of the CFC No 25 Company and the Mar Lodge camp will be available in the next Record on this site.
[http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jmitchell/genealogy/cfc45.html] "ERROR 404"
This revision below applies to Image numbers: 4507 to 4519 on this FM website!
N.B. this hosted link on the Rootsweb website has now been "buried" behind further index's as "static content"!:-
RootsWeb "Hosted websites will become read-only beginning in early 2024. At that time, all logins will be disabled, but hosted sites will remain on RootsWeb as static content. Website owners wishing to maintain their sites must migrate to a different hosting provider before 2024"
The revised link to Bob Briggs and Jude Mitchell's data, as of January 2024, is:-
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jmitchell/genealogy/cfc.html
This revised link (please copy and paste into your browser) with the kind permission of Bob Briggs takes readers to a very detailed website constructed from information provided by Bob Briggs and Jude Mitchell. The camp and bridge locations, the volumes of timer produced by each company, lists of all the CFC men at the camp, images and much more with links to many other information sources. A really great resource.
Revised BR 2024-01-09
Download Large Version (1.1MB)
Groups: Canadian and Newfoundland sawmillers in Scotland, Sawmills, pulp mills, chipboard mills, War time constructions and defence structures in woods and forests