Hamish Park Glentress Forester School c 1947
Photographs and images courtesy of Joan Park which shows her father, Hamish Park, during his time at Glentress Forester Training School about 1947.
Hamish, it seems, was part of a thirty strong group of students who were sent in 1946 to a set of huts used during the war as a prisoner of war camp which had been hastily re-designated as a new Forester Training School. Many of the students were demobbed service personnel and Hamish, a former flight engineer, had served on Stirling Bombers until his aircraft was shot down in 1942 whilst on a mission to Frankfurt. Following capture he was sent to a POW camp in Poland and survived the infamous death march in 1945 when the Germans evacuated some camps ahead of the Russian advance and forced the inmates to walk enormous distances in terrible conditions to camps within German territory.
Hamish was in the very first batch of students at Glentress Forester Training School and completed the course in 1948 and, as can be seen in the attach PDF, also gained his RSFS junior and senior certificates in 1947 and 1948 respectively.
Leaving Glentress, Hamish joined the Forestry Commission Research branch and worked on research sample plots all over Scotland before being stationed as a forester at Farr, Inverness and following that to Glentrool. In 1967 he was appointed Head Forester at Keillour Forest, near Crieff for three years before serving a further three years at Drumtochty Forest. On promotion to Chief Forester he moved to Tummel Forest where he served for twelve years, retiring from there in 1984.
Hamish married Jean Wilson who he first met at Glentress when she was appointed Catering Supervisor for the Forester Training School in 1947 following Marjorie West’s move South for a time. Jean worked as a Supervisor until the summer of 1949 and also did some clerical work in the office helping out with student wages and other admin duties. (Jean and daughter Joan have provided many names to the group photographs showing the 1946 and 1947 student intake)
Attached within the PDF is a Scotsman article dated July 1948 which describes the career of two students at Glentress, Hamish Park and David Bridges, as part of the 60 strong student roll at the school. The article also mentions the large numbers of applicants, 600 applying for the 272 places available at the 5 Forester Training Schools in the country (three recently opened).
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