Fordson Super Dexta Tractor Revives Island Tradition

Brand new Fordson Super Dexta

The new tractor Wil refers to was a Fordson Super Dexta, which his father had just bought, and which was due to be delivered that day. The year was 1963 and Abraham Hughes, Wil’s father, had decided to replace his Ferguson tractor with a brand new Fordson Super Dexta.

Wil ponders over why it might have been that his father chose to buy a Fordson tractor rather than a Massey Ferguson, which might have been the obvious choice for someone who had owned a Ferguson. Wil thinks that perhaps his father had noticed that the first of the diesel Massey Ferguson tractors, the ones with the 4-cylinder engine, had already earned a bad reputation.

“My father’s neighbour owned one of the Massey Ferguson 4-cylinder models,” Wil recalls, “and they were always having trouble starting it, so I think that’s why he chose the Fordson.” The Fordson name was indeed well established in Britain. The Fordson Model N had been the tractor that almost everyone had depended on to feed the country during World War II. The Fordson name probably felt well established to Abraham, as he would have seen many of these tractors ploughing and powering threshing machines throughout the island.

When Abraham bought the Fordson Dexta, he traded in his old Ferguson tractor as part payment, doing the deal through his local Ford dealership, Mona Motors in the nearby town of Llangefni. Wil has the sort of mind that retains certain information, and he can recall to this day that the Fordson Dexta cost £605 (roughly $19,500 in today’s terms), and that the dealership gave his father £200 for the old Ferguson.

Wil never saw the old Ferguson tractor again, and he wonders if it is still in existence somewhere or if it ended up being scrapped. At the time though, the young Wil didn’t give too much thought to the old Ferguson, because the Fordson Dexta was much more exciting – it seemed thoroughly modern and was like the best thing since sliced bread.

Sta-Dri cab offered comfort

The Hughes tractor was the first Fordson Dexta on the island, and what made it seem all the more cutting edge was the fact that Wil’s father bought a Sta-Dri cab for it. Based in Bristol, England, Sta-Dri (Cabs) Ltd. built and supplied cabs that could be fitted to various tractor makes. The Sta-Dri cab was said to offer excellent visibility, safety glass, sliding windows, detachable doors and a fiberglass roof. The company also offered a Tip Top Cab, which was mostly canvas except for a futuristic-looking wrap-around windscreen.

These cabs were something of a godsend in a time when most tractors were “open top” and farmers and tractor drivers were forced to spend long hours in the tractor seat in freezing conditions. Anglesey is surrounded by sea on all sides and at times the wind there cuts through you like a whetted knife. The winter of ’63 was a particularly cold one, so no doubt Abraham Hughes felt he was in the lap of luxury with his new cabbed tractor. By today’s standards, the Sta-Dri cab would seem primitive, but at the time it was a real step forward for driver comfort.

During the 1970s a law came out, dictating that tractors that were being used for work purposes had to be fitted with a rollover protection system. Wil removed the old cab and fitted a roll bar onto the tractor instead. All that remains of the cab now are the holes in the mudguards where it was once bolted on.

As original as a working example can be

Throughout Wil’s childhood and teens, the tractor was always busy. It was used for all manner of farm work, including baling hay, and that continued after Wil became the owner of the tractor in 1973. “It certainly paid for itself,” Wil says, leaning on the mudguard and looking fondly at the little blue tractor, “and it worked very hard for both me and my father.”

The tractor did, however, have a rather sad period in its life when it ended up working as what we call here a “scraper,” that is, a tractor used to clean manure out of cattle sheds and yards. Such a fate befell many small tractors; demoted from field work to working in the cattle yard, scraping muck. Small tractors are handy for this, but the corrosive manure takes its toll on a tractor’s tin work.

However, the Dexta eventually got a reprieve from this particular sentence, largely because it began to fail. Wil noticed that the tractor’s engine was becoming harder and harder to start. It was basically worn out, and for a while Wil thought about looking for a replacement engine for the tractor. But then he decided to rebuild the existing engine instead.

When he took the engine apart, Wil began to wish he had never started. Every part that could be worn out was worn out, and the job seemed never-ending. It might have been something Wil regretted starting at the time, but now he is glad that he opted to rebuild rather than replace the engine, because it means that more of the tractor is original. “It has had new parts, of course,” says Wil, “but if a tractor is to remain in use then some parts do need to be replaced from time to time. I like to think it is as original as a working example can be.”

Hughes family Fordson Super Dexta’s first ploughing competition

So, back to that Friday in 1963. When Wil arrived home from school, he ran flat out up the drive to the farm, threw his school bag over the wall into the garden and ran over to the farm buildings where the shiny new tractor awaited. Wil gazed at the tractor. Compared to the old Ferguson, it looked like the height of sophistication and he couldn’t wait to hear it running. “In no time my father started it up and within minutes I was driving it across the field,” he says. “I will never forget that moment!”

Sixty years later, Wil still drives the Fordson Super Dexta. Considering that the tractor has spent six decades in a maritime climate, it has stood the test of time remarkably well. The tractor was the family workhorse for two generations, but it was more than just a tool of the trade. This tractor also introduced Wil to the world of competitive ploughing, a hobby that has been the foundation of some of Wil’s most treasured friendships and a pastime which has kept him busy, or, as his wife would say “out of trouble” for half a century.

Just one week after the tractor arrived on the family farm in ’63, Wil took it to a local ploughing match. To his delight, he won a medal in the Fordson Ploughing class that he still has today. Many more such competitions followed, for every corner of the island held ploughing matches during spring and autumn. Wil drove the tractor to each of the events, all the time honing his skills.

Isle of Anglesey ploughing competition tradition

Ploughing competitions were traditionally held in every rural part of the U.K. Local ploughmen gathered with their ploughs and horses to compete against each other and see who was the best ploughman. Straight, even furrows not only meant that the ploughman had talent, it also meant that his horses were trained to a high standard, and this was something to be proud of. Ploughing was one of the most skilled jobs on the farm, and everyone who did more menial work was in awe of the ploughmen. Ploughing matches, where skills were showcased, were an important part of the rural calendar.

When tractors took over from horses, ploughing matches remained popular, and travelling by tractor meant that it was easier for a ploughman to get to more competitions. In Wil’s youth, it was nothing to drive several miles to a ploughing match, so by driving a tractor, he could attend more than one match during the season.

Gradually though, ploughing matches became fewer in number, and by the early 1970s only one ploughing competition was still held on the island. Traditions were dying out, and times were changing. People were less aware of where and how their food was produced, possibly because convenience foods distanced people from farming. More and more families had cars, which meant that they could look outside of their own little communities for amusement, and rural events became less popular.

Ploughing competition returns in 1998

In the mid-1970s, Anglesey’s ploughing matches ceased. It looked for a time as though there would never again be a ploughing competition on the island, but in 1998, a group of men (including Wil) decided to try to resurrect the tradition and bring a ploughing competition back to the island.

In 1999 the Anglesey Vintage Ploughing Society arranged a ploughing match in Rhoscolyn, the first to be held on the island in a quarter of a century. Since then, the club has gone from strength to strength. Anglesey’s annual event is now well and truly rooted in the agricultural calendar, attended by people from much further afield than back in the 1960s, when Wil first began competing on the family’s Super Dexta. Today, people come from all over Wales, England and Ireland to compete in this event.

It’s thanks to people like Wil that we still have an annual ploughing match on the Isle of Anglesey, where the great and the good can be seen tilling the land in a time-honoured way. Wil has preserved his late father’s tractor, ensuring that it remains in the family, and he has also worked tirelessly to preserve the rural traditions of his neighbourhood.

Josephine Roberts lives on an old-fashioned smallholding in Snowdonia, North Wales, and has a passion for all things vintage. Email her at josiewales2021@aol.com.

Originally published as “Reviving Island Traditions” in the June 2023 issue of Farm Collector magazine.