This meeting will be our AGM and will be held in the hall and online via Zoom. The talk will follow.
Download an AGM agenda, committee nomination and proxy voting form here.
On the eve of the Second World War, with only seven months’ supply of timber stockpiled, Britain was in trouble. Timber was critical to the war effort: it was needed for everything from aircraft and shipbuilding to communications and coal mining. Lacking in both men and timber, the government reluctantly opened lumber work for women to apply – and apply they did. Enter the Lumberjills.
The Women’s Timber Corps had thousands of members who would prove themselves as strong and as smart as any man: they felled and crosscut trees by hand, operated sawmills and ran whole forestry sites. They may not have been on the front line, but they fought their own battles on the home front for respect and equality.
Speaker and author Joanna Foat says: “I hope to inspire women of all ages with the strength, courage and determination of the Lumberjills. Out in the forests away from the restrictions imposed on women by society, they realised they could sit astride a tree, smoke a pipe and fell 10-tonne trees just like the men if they wanted to.”