Forestry Memories

Sawmilling team, Glenrinnes, Banffsire

Photograph courtesy of Shona Selkirk. Please seek her permission to use or copy this image.

As this was in Tommy Inch's photo collection, we might assume he was in it. However, he would only be 18 at the time, and not long started his career. That might be him to the right of the saw, or at the back. Tommy started work at Kiltarlity, so he was maybe hired out, either individually, or as part of a squad, to do this job in Banffshire. A long way from home. Is that a polieman at the back right?

Born in 1907, in Culburnie, near Kiltarlity, Tommy Inch started his forestry career working with Frank Sime’s sawmill, Balgate, Kiltarlity probably around 1925. He worked as a sawmiller, both around the Beauly area and further afield, usually for Sime. Later he managed “Tommy’s Mill”, Fanellan, for Sime for a number of years, until injury precipitated his retirement, in 1960. He then worked, freelance, for Crichton, in Beauly. He set up as a subcontractor in 1963, employing three men - Dave Innes, Bob Reid and Alec Campbell - until his retirement in 1969.

That area around Kiltarlity was a hotbed of forestry activity during the war. According to Tommy’s daughter, Shona Selkirk, to whom Forestry Memories is indebted, Tommy spoke about both the Canadian lumber camp and also the “Poles Camp” below Teanacoil House.

Was it standard practice, in that era for squads to travel far to do jobs? Or was skilled labour sourced locally?

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Groups: Groups of people, Horses at work in Forests, Sawmills, pulp mills, chipboard mills

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