Women's Timber Corps

Women's Timber Corps bronze statue

I have been mesmerised over the past week with the splendour of the autumn colours this year. The same thoughts were echoed in a feature on the news this morning.  It prompted a morning walk round some of the local forests and the results were spectacular. The colours on display were pure genius: copper, mustard, vermilion and fading greens all set against a cloudless autumn sky.

Rowan

Larch and Spruce

Bare Birch 

Oak - the Duracell leaf

The native oak and birch woods were surrounded by the planting of conifers in the inter war period. In 1942 the Women's Timber Corps was re-established and made a huge contribution to the management and exploitation of the forest resources. The 'lumberjills' were trained in a fortnight to wield axes, operate sawmills, drive the tractors, haul logs with horses and transport the timber by truck to the railways. It would take at least that long to do the health and safety training alone nowadays. They were then billeted in the main timber producing areas of Scotland where they felled trees and made pit props, telegraph poles, ship's masts, railway sleepers, timber for road blocks and wooden crosses for war graves.

The Corps was disbanded in 1946 and they were finally recognised in 2007 by the commissioning of a bronze statue which was erected by the David Marshall lodge. The bronze was in harmony with the autumn colours and provided a powerful Boadicea like image in morning sun. It prompted the thought that had the Women's Timber Corps been responsible for planting they might have tailored the conifers into the landscape far better than the men of the Forestry Commission, who seemed unable to think outside straight lines and blocks when planting the undulating hillsides with platoons of conifers.

At least that phase is over and Forestry Enterprise are making great progress in replanting some of the native species as the conifers are harvested across the vast Queen Elizabeth forest park. I am just hoping that the replanting will not need to extend to the shapely ash trees that are found randomly around the edge of the forests and at the end of the garden.