Slasher Magazine Summary: Publication No. 211 - July 1965
The digitisation of the Slasher was undertaken by, and images courtesy of, the Forest Research Knowledge and Information Management staff based at both the Northern Research Station in Roslin, Scotland and Alice Holt in Surrey, where the original copies are currently located.
The content summary below was very kindly compiled by Diane Birkett, Bedfordshire. See PDF attachment link below the text to view the full document. A total of over 400 issues were produced between 1948 and the final issue in 2010.
Retirement
Mr G.B. Ryle, Deputy Director General is to retire later this year.
Resignations
Mr H.A. Turner, Secretary to the Commission for 15 years has left for the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources.
Mr David Gowler, former Executive Officer at London Headquarters has left to hitch-hike and work his way around the world.
Presentations
Mr H.A. Turner, Secretary to the Commission, farewell dinner and presentation on his resignation.
Mr G.B. Ryle, Deputy Director General, farewell dinner and retirement presentation.
Promotions
Mr Jack Lenman has been promoted to Senior Chief Executive Officer. With effect from 1st July, he became deputy to the Controller of Finance.
Mr Callum Nicolson, currently Chief Clerk at Inverness has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer, Edinburgh.
Mr R. Coote, currently Chief Clerk at Bristol has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer, Headquarters.
Obituary
Mr Tom S. Pryce, East England Conservancy, who joined the Commission in 1952 has died.
Forestry and Wildlife in France
Mr G.B. Ryle, former Deputy Director General gives his observations on the forestry and wildlife in Cannes, France, including last summer's fire through the pine and scrubs at Les Esterels.
He also describes Ile Sainte Marguerite, an island which is largely owned by the Department des Eaux et Forets.
Badger Watching
Mr D.A. MacCaskill, Forester at Inverinan, West Scotland, writes about a study of badgers at West Loch Aweside. There is a badger watching club and tree hides have been built to observe badgers.
In the early 1920s the owner of an estate on the northern boundary imported badgers from his estates in Ireland and the north of England. Up to this time there had been few if any Badgers in the area, therefore the badgers are an Irish English hybrid.
Photography Success
The Keynsham Photographic Society's new Mills and Mills cup was presented to Mr J.W. Davies, Clerical Assistant, Bristol.
The trophy, provided by a local firm of chemists, is awarded each year to the member securing the highest number of points from the five colour slide competitions held every season by the Society.
Mr Davis was the outright winner of two of these competitions and runner up in a third. His winning entry in the final competition of the season, entitled "Safe Port at Sunset" was described by the judges as one of the finest transparencies they had ever seen.
Arithmetical Error
Mr T.W. Brookes, writing from Kennington Nursery disputes the calculation of standing coniferous timber prices between 1963 and 1964, quoted in an earlier issue headed "Mony a Mickle Makes a Muckle". He says the difference between the amounts was underestimated by £4. 9s. 4d.
Faith in Timber Houses
Mr Jack Aaron of the Marketing Section at Headquarters gives some interesting facts about timber houses in the Greater London area.
The number of timber houses under the jurisdiction of the Greater London Council is 675, with all but five being erected in the 1920s at housing estates in Burnt Oak and Becontree during an acute brick shortage.
He lists the advantages, lighter so less foundation problems on London clay, stood up to the effects of bombing during the war, and mentions the odd five being Canadian houses built at Brittwell.
Since the war 850 prefabricated timber houses have been erected, mainly at Langley, Buckinghamshire; St. Paul’s Cray, Kent; Debden, Essex; Harold Hill, Essex; St. Helier, Surrey; Boreham, Hertfordshire and Oxhey, Hertfordshire.
The Cantlin Stone in Shropshire
Head Forester R.J. Jennings describes an ancient track across the hilltop of Kerry Forest, Shropshire from the Anchor Inn, where England meets Wales, and winding its way east towards the old market town of Bishop Castle. Not far from this track, on the desolate moorland where mountain ponies and Clun Forest sheep graze, is a carved stone cross in a rough stone slab base.
In the 1940s, Mr Jennings was in charge of this forest in North Wales and while replanting an old shelter belt known as the Long plantation, was asked by the local authority to put a new fence around the stone to prevent it being damaged by cattle.
Making enquiries about the memorial, he learned the facts.
On a bleak winter night in the year 1691, an itinerant hawker named William Cantlin was battling his way through a blizzard along this lonely road. A few yards south of its highest point at 1,585 feet he fell exhausted and died.
No parish was eager to go to the expense of burying a penniless stranger, so after some dispute as to where the responsibility lay, for landmarks were few and Cantlin had collapsed almost on the county boundary, the villagers of Bettws y Crwyn in Shropshire laid him in their churchyard high up on the isolated slopes of Black Mountain five miles away.
Had it not been for the Clun Forest Enclosure Act of 1875, this good deed of the parishioners of Bettws would have been forgotten, but in burying his remains in their churchyard and recording it by roughly engraving a stone where they found his frozen body, they did better than they knew, for this enabled their successors to claim several hundred additional acres of land for the parish of Bettws y Crwyn.
On a recent visit to Kerry Forest, Mr Jennings visited the solitary spot where the pedlar died and made out the inscription on the stone, crudely chipped by a yeoman hand nearly three centuries ago… "W.C. decsd. here buried 1691 at Betws". The carved cross was erected in the late 19th century by a one time Member of Parliament for Ludlow and is known locally as the Cantlin Stone.
Black Fox
Mr Fred Courtier, Game Warden, writes from the New Forest to mention a letter by L. Edwards of Haslemere, in the April issue of The Gamekeeper and Countryside Journal claiming to have caught a black fox in Surrey.
Inforesta Drama Group Production
The Inforesta Drama Group presented "On Monday Next", their latest comedy by Philip King. The story is about a repertory company rehearsing their play for presentation at the Theatre Royal, Drossmouth.
The Inforesta performers were Alan Chapman, John Alp, Ken Winter, Edith Nolan, Brian Holland, Edna Tebbitt, Shirley Fowler, Maurice Gubby, Ken Beeson, Dorothy Lloyd, Valerie Newell, Eric Cuerden, Ken Baldwin and David Perkins.
The Drama Group were invited to undertake a tour to Kielder, Shrewsbury, Llandulas, Llaneglwys and Dean Forest, and ending with two shows in London. The play was produced by Ken Winter, designed by Alan Chapman and stage managed by David Perkins.
Appointment
The Reverend J.G. Curwen, formerly District Officer at Kielder, who retired to take Holy Orders was instituted as Rector of Falstone and Kielder by the Lord Bishop of Newcastle in the church at Falstone.