Forester who went against the grain
FOR almost seven decades Roger Williams-Ellis bestrode the Welsh forestry sector as majestically as the trees he cultivated in the shadow of the Rivals on the Llyn Peninsula.
As other private landowners abandoned commercial forestry, he forged ahead with a tree planting programme that grew to cover 1,000 acres and spawned a successful timber fencing business.
In doing so he often found himself a lone advocate of the environmental and economic benefits of timber production in rural Wales.
Last Wednesday he died, aged 94, at Ysbyty Gwynedd, surrounded by his family.
He leaves a widow, second wife Jane, three sons, Jonathan, Christopher and Mark, and three grandchildren.
“His legacy is his whole-hearted commitment to forestry in North Wales and his passion for heritage,” said Jonathan.
Mr Williams-Ellis was born on April 12, 1923, at Glasfryn, the family estate at Llanaelhaearn, near Pwllheli, where he would spend much of his life.
Both parents were profound influences.
His father was Rupert Williams-Ellis, brother of Clough, architect of Portmeirion, while his mother, Hertfordshire-born Cecily, founded the Caernarvonshire branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales in 1928.
After boarding at Eton School, which he detested, he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers during WW11 and soon found himself aboard a troop ship sailing past Bardsey Island at the start of a three-month voyage to India.
There he joined the Sapper Miners, rising rapidly to the rank of major, one of the youngest in the British Army to hold the rank at the time.
Demobilised, he trained as a land surveyor in Denbigh before taking over the family’s forestry business after his father’s death in 1952. He was aged 28.
The land, with peat layered on clay, was unsuitable for farming but it was ideal for growing Sitka conifer trees.
From an initial 800 acres, the forestry operations were expanded to more than 1,000 acres and by the 1970s Glasfryn was selling two to three million trees a year to private and investment foresters.
The estate also become a Christmas staple for generations of local youngsters. “An abiding memory is the families who came to collect their Christmas trees at Glasfryn,” said Jonathan.
“Father would have trees ready in the yard or, if nothing was suitable, he would head out in the woodlands to cut down one that was.
“When loading the trees into cars, he would push them in through the front passenger window, often still wet and with little consideration for the children siting in the back!”
The loss of tax relief for tree planting in 1973 put the brakes on the business, prompting Mr Williams-Ellis to focus on holiday lets instead.
Since 1952 he had been restoring buildings on the estate, including the Coach House he shared with his first wife.
The man who once thought of becoming a rural architect would go on to collect multiple awards for his heritage work.
Glasfryn Forestry began providing soft wood for pulp mills but when that became uneconomical he established a traditional sawmill in 1984.
True to form, the decision went against the grain: the Llyn Peninsula had once hosted seven mills but all had closed down in the face of cheaper timber imports.
Initially Mr Williams-Ellis found a market supplying green pole thinnings to Anglesey Aluminium.
He later installed a drying facility and tanalising plant to cure timber posts and fencing, which became the core of the business.
Where it couldn’t compete on price, the enterprise won out on quality.
All the while he campaigned for private foresters to be given a fair share of rural funding, and for the sector to be pushed higher up the policy agenda.
A former Welsh chairman of the Timber Growers Association, he was also a former High Sheriff of Caernarvonshire.
He was awarded the OBE for services to forestry and a career highlight was winning the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society’s Sir Bryner Jones Award.