THE Lumberjills have returned to a Dalby Forest woodland glade for the second week of performances of Hannah Davies's play about the unheralded work of the Women’s Timber Corps in the Second World War.

Set up in 1942 when Ernest Bevin, Minister for Labour and National Service, declared that "one million wives were wanted for war work", the Lumberjills served as part of the Women’s Land Army.

York company Common Ground Theatre are now telling their story in Davies's play, The Lumberjills, performed in partnership with the Forestry Commission as an "outdoor theatre experience" in a site-specific performance on Jessica Watson's 1940s' campsite set with awnings and wood shavings and log seating for the audience.

The Lumberjills, as they were affectionately known, replaced the men who had answered the call to war, carrying out the arduous tasks of felling, snedding, loading lorries and trains and sawmilling timber all over England.

In Tom Cornford's a cappella-singing, multi role-playing cast, Jannah Warlow's acquisitions officer Mary, from a North Riding farm, has a young husband serving overseas. Ashleigh Cordery's factory lass Ada comes from a working-class Sheffield family that demands she sends money home. Amie Burns Walker's pucker southerner Connie is doing something useful at the insistence of her mother and scornful father.

"We knew we needed young actors, but of a diverse age and range of backgrounds, as the Lumberjills came from long distances to work in Dalby, so we chose actresses we knew already or were recommended to us, and basically we picked people we liked," says Tom.

Jannah, originally from York and now living in Bristol, has overseen the production's music, combining her own compositions with songs of the period. "We used 1940s' music as a starting point for inspiration for the music that weaves its way through the play and we settled on a cappella singing as the best way to use music," she says.

"One of the pieces has a text, called The Blitz Lullaby, written by a Lumberjill," says Tom. "There's a collection of poems by Lumberjills that's been great to work into the story," adds Hannah.

Jannah plays Mary Ainsworth, a Yorkshire farming lass. "Mary is 21, at least a couple of years older than the other two, and she's from Yorkshire, a village close to Dalby Forsest, who grew up on a farm, so she's used to physical labour. She's married but her husband has signed up for the war effort," she says.

Amie's character is a 19-year-old southerner. "I play Connie Curtis, who's from a privileged background but not necessarily the most emotionally rich one, especially in her relationship with her parents, so you get to see her journey, with her viewpoint of the world growing more rounded after she becomes a Lumberjill," she says.

"She'd been sent away to a boarding school that's left her wild and wilful and she's never had a sense of consequence of her actions, but now she gets to live and work with people who've had very different lives and learns respect for them from her experiences."

Ashleigh plays 17-year-old Sheffield factory lass Ada Gladstone. "She's the youngest of the Lumberjills, from a working-class family, working at a factory when she decides to sign up for the WTC," she says. "She comes from an oppressive family, where her parents are controlling, so this is her chance to discover herself and her independence."

Hannah says: "That's one of the things about the war: people from different ways of life and classes being thrown together and having to work as a team, despite their differences. The Lumberjills typified that."

Common Ground Theatre presents The Lumberjills, Dalby Forest, near Pickering, 6pm tonight; 2pm, 6pm, tomorrow and Sunday. Suitable for age seven upwards. Allow half an hour to walk to the performance site at the end of the Ellerburn Trail, Dalby Forest. Box office: cgtheatre.co.uk