Balnagown Estate

[Roger Payne]

'So once the war was over his third and final wife was able to return to an estate largely free of debt.'

And presumably largely free of trees as well........

[Surpmil]

Yes, both of those stories are true.

During WW2 the Crown harvested a lot of the timber on the Balnagown estate for the war effort, and applied the money they owed for it against Sir Charles's tax debt (by then Ross was dead, of course). So once the war was over his third and final wife was able to return to an estate largely free of debt.

Some years ago I examined a file in the Public Records Office and made a note:



FO 371/61111

Correspondence relating to the Balnagown Estate (in liquidation), property of the late Sir Charles Ross, and various properties in it which were requisitioned under wartime powers so they could be farmed more efficiently. Scottish Department unwilling to give them back and intends to let them to new tenants.

Certainly an interesting principle of law that.

[Mk VII]

Under wartime emergency powers they could turn farmers off their land and have the land farmed by someone else, who, in the govt's opinion, would farm it more efficiently in the national interest. A.G. Street wrote a novel about an instance of it, Shameful Harvest it was called.

[Surpmil]

It would be interesting to know what proportion of those endowed with such powers had ever actually farmed, or stood in a farm field!

[vykkagur]

Certainly an interesting principle of law that.

These powers extended well after hostilities, which is why the control of the land was not immediately returned. Severe rationing lasted ten years after the end of the war in order to combat England's massive post-war trade deficit. My mother was granted an extra egg (per week or per day, I'm not sure which) because she was pregnant with my brother in the Fifties. My father moved his family to the colonies shortly after they discovered I was on the way, mostly to get away from rationing. Another example: Steel was similarly controlled, on the basis of a company's ability to export. The Rover Car Company, never an export operation, couldn't get sufficient steel allotments because of that. When they introduced the Land Rover, they got only enough steel for the chassis, which is why it was welded from flat plates. The bodies had to be made from aluminium, which was not controlled because England had massive stockpiles from scrapped aircraft. When the Land Rover became an export goldmine, they continued with alloy bodies because it became a major selling point.

In the case of Balnagown, the Scottish Department wanted to get the maximum yield from the acreage for the same reason, to reduce dependence on imported food, so they were empowered by the Labour government to assign the land to those they deemed best able to produce, on the belief that the Ross family had not proven up to the job.

[Mk VII]

It wasn't until 1954 that all forms of rationing finally came to an end, with meat rationing the last to go.

[Surpmil]

It wasn't until 1954 that all forms of rationing finally came to an end, with meat rationing the last to go.

Yes, I remember my mother talking about that. She left in '58.