Inverinate Forest register book – Used by Ratagan Forest clerical staff after amalgamation 1970 -1983
The register was found in the old Forestry Office located at Jenkin’s Park, Fort Augustus. These rare documents seldom survived as they were maintained only within the individual forest offices. The registers were renewed and replaced as years passed and compiled in various formats. No forest worker lists or registers from times before WWII have so far been located. It appears that only the names of people currently working at the forest would be entered into any new register.
The initial page of the book is a copy of the regularly used Forestry Commission finance accounts used at forest level. The majority are the accounts used for ground preparation, fertilising, planting, weeding and drain maintenance followed by those for felling, thinning and extraction of timber. There are some estate accounts regarding upkeep of houses, forest worker holdings, fences and amenity work. Note the 12000 accounts used to record holiday, sick, wet and travel costs.
The second and third combination pages are a list of Ratagan Forest workers and their details such as date started work, work grade, address, forest house rent number, weekly rent, marriage status and dependents, and lastly, date of leaving employment at the forest. The first page lists all the workers on the Ratagan and Inverinate side (Loch Duich) and the other page those on the Glenelg and Eilanreach side. It is likely that that the worker squads under their gangers and foresters would be formed in these two areas with different work start points and carryout work closest to their home locations. The amalgamation in 1969/70 involved four former independent forest units of Eilanreach, Inverinate, Glenshiel and Ratagan and formed the single management and accounting unit of Ratagan Forest with a total area of around 11,300 acres.
The list of people on the two pages was probably the record used from 1970 through to 1977. The follow on pages are more lists of financial accounts and then there are more two more combination pages of lists of workers that may have been used from 1978 onwards up until 1980. This is followed by a single combination page containing all the forest worker names from 1980 to 1983/4. After this period a substantial restructuring of the Forestry Commission areas took place and forest units were rolled up into more centralised Forest Districts with modern computerised wage and finance facilities. That was the end of these hand written lists of workers by forest but below is the list of names recorded in all the pages:
J Allison (Mobile Worker Roads and Bridges)
T Broadfoot
D Cameron
Duncan David Cameron
E Cameron
E Cameron (Jnr)
John Cameron (Mobile Worker Roads and Bridges)
J A Chisholm
R Chisholm
David L Barron
David T Barron
James L Barron
J A Black
D Fletcher
D Fraser
K Fraser
James Grant
J K Grant
K Grant
W Grant
D Kennedy
C Kerr
J Kerr
M Lamont
J McCamm
A MacAskill
A MacDonald
D MacDonald
Ian MacDonald
W J MacDonald
D McDougall
I MacGregor
R L MacGregor
A MacIsaac
J MacKay
J S McKerlich
H MacLure
N M Mackay
J MacKinnon
J MacLean
L J MacLean
A D MacLeod
D MacLeod
Allan B MacLennan
Alistair MacLennan
D MacPherson
A MacQueen
C MacRae
D J MacRae
Gordon MacRae
J A MacRae
J MacRae
Murdo G MacRae
Donald A MacVicar
R MacVicar
A Morrison
D A Morrison
D J Morrison
J Morrison
J A Morrison
S Myerscough
John O’Kane
T Parsons
J Sinclair
M Strachan
P Smith
Robert Louis Stern
A Stewart
M Stork
K Trayling
M Wilding
Please see the PDF link below to view the all the pages. Any comments and information on any of the people and the forests would be very welcome in the Comments facility below.
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Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports, Groups of people