Tributes to Companion Tim Selman

We were deeply sorry to hear the news of the death on 26th May 2023 of Companion Tim Selman, former manager of the Wyre Community Land Trust. We send our condolences to Jo and their children. Here, former Guild colleagues John Iles, Clive Wilmer, Mark Cleaver and Ruth Nutter pay tribute.

JOHN ILES

I first met Tim at a conference in Cornwall organised by the Eden Project in May 2011 about restoring the fruit orchards in the South West. I was there to speak about our work through Grow with Wyre on restoring the traditional orchards in and around the Wyre Forest. 

Tim took great interest in what we were doing and the Land Trust model that we had developed to engage with landowners and agencies such as Natural England. He was at that time working for the Tamar Valley AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) including finding ways to restore and develop the traditional orchards along the valley.

Tim came and visited us in Wyre and we found him to be a great encourager and able to suggest further contacts and collaborators. I was also impressed in the ways in which he had engaged with the arts and interpretation of the heritage in the Tamar Valley.

As the Grow with Wyre lottery funded programme drew to a close in 2012 Natural England, the Forestry Commission and the Guild of St George provided the funding to enable the appointment of a Strategic Development Manager for Wyre. Tim applied for the role and after interviews was selected and started on this three year contract in January 2013. The job entailed developing a 50 year vision for the forest and a 5 year Action Plan which Tim succeeded in doing. He worked very hard to manage a process that helped many partners engage and contribute. One outcome was the signing of a protocol by Natural England and Forestry Commission to work closer together. 

In 2016 with the three year contract delivered, Tim was appointed as Managing Director for the Wyre Community Land Trust and over the next 4 years grew its team, equipment and capabilities. The Trust moved from its home at Uncllys Farm next door to St George’s Farm. Memorable during this time was the development of the Ruskin in Wyre heritage lottery funded project which sought to make Ruskin better known and included an exhibition in the Bewdley Museum as well as celebrations of crafts and the development of a sawmill and wood working workshop. 

Tim also engaged with several Universities mostly through their architecture departments which led to workshops and experimental constructions and Studio in the Woods twice. He was enthusiastically trying to find ways of better using the oak from the Guild’s woodlands in Wyre. 

Covid hit WCLT hard with staff being furloughed and activity grinding to a halt. Tim recognised that the Trust could not support his post any further and so left in the autumn of 2020 to set up his own conservation contracting business in Shropshire.

Tim will be sadly missed for his enthusiasm, good humour and friendship. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Jo and their daughters.

CLIVE WILMER

I was shocked and saddened to hear that Tim had died – so prematurely as it seemed to me. I had thought of him as a person full of vitality and blessed with great resources of vision and energy.

During my time as Master of the Guild, he was one of the key contributors to its work. He did not join us as a Ruskinian, but as someone who admired what the Guild was doing in the Wyre and wanted to carry it forward, but it helped that he was someone who, passionate about nature, cared about the arts and crafts as well.

As Managing Director of the Wyre Community Land Trust and strongly allied with John Iles, he led the Trust and the Guild into territory which, in my early years as a Guild director, we wouldn’t even have contemplated: managing our own land, cherishing and developing it with a modern understanding of conservation. Tim and John between them persuaded us that our land needed to be managed if we were to make it and keep it ‘beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful’ in Ruskin’s phrase.

He also understood that you needed to consult and was always an engaging collaborator and friend. I am sure all Companions who knew him will miss him greatly.

MARK CLEAVER

I first met Tim before he took up his position at the Forestry Commission at the Wyre Forest.  I had moved on from the Wyre before he took up this role at the Commission and although we did not work together, we stayed in touch through mutual interest in the Wyre so I knew Tim through our respective work and passion for the environment.  I always enjoyed his company whenever we met socially, be it at Guild events or at other times when I visited the Forest.  Whenever we met, Tim was full of passion, energy and positivity, generous with his praise of others and always a pleasure to be with.  When he took up the role as Managing Director at the WCLT, I was delighted.

During the years Tim held the reins at WCLT, I saw him challenge and stretch the Trust and the Guild, making space to allow creativity and innovation, pushing boundaries of what could be done.  His enthusiasm led to some exemplary projects, Studio in the Woods being one I am reminded of every time I visit.  Tim in many ways continued the legacy of others that went before him and his work reflects Ruskin’s initial aspirations for the land through sustaining the valued, working together to make fruitful use of the land.  Much of what Tim developed is still in place today: WCLT still supports a wonderful and creative community, they have a working wood yard, sawmill and a carpentry workshop making beautiful objects from the Guild’s timber; the Guild has a successful and active partner in WCLT; and Ruskin land is a vibrant forest full of activity with wildlife richer and more resilient than ever before.

I was deeply saddened to hear of Tim’s passing. He will be remembered and greatly missed.

RUTH NUTTER

The photographs below were kindly supplied by John Iles; they show Tim with the Guild's Board during their visit to Ruskin Land in July 2014.