Britton Timbers

For More than One Hundred Years

The name Britton has been synonymous with high-quality timber at Circular Head for 100 years.

The story of one of Tasmania’s largest family owned sawmills began even before the Brittons arrived in Australia, however, in the village of Elmscott, in northern Devon, England. Here 11-year-old Elijah Britton received his first taste of sawdust at the bottom of his father’s saw-pit, while cutting boards for coffins. Elijah’s family emigrated to Victoria six years later, in 1890, trying wheat farming in the hot, dry, apparently less palatable dust of the Mallee district.

In 1907, Elijah’s younger brother, Mark, sought greener pastures in Tasmania. In the off-season, between wheat crops, he took a job labouring for J.S. Lee and Sons’ sawmill at the Mowbray Swamp west of Smithton. The mainstay of Circular Head sawmilling then, as now, was hardwood (Eucalyptus obliqua, or ‘brown top stringybark’, marketed as ‘Tasmanian oak’), used for fencing posts, rails, floors, furniture, in wheelwrighting and almost every facet of the mining industry. However, the Lees were harvesting blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon), a timber suited to more specialised applications.

Continue reading about Britton Timbers' history in the downloadable PDF booklet"Celebrating a Century of Britton Timbers - Tasmania's Blackwood Dynasty".