3, Ridge Side, Haw Lane, Bledlow Ridge, High Wycombe, Bucks,
HP14 4JN., England
By American standards, the British Steam Plough Club may well
appear rather small and specialized. It was formed in 1966, and
although its progress has never been spectacular, the club had
grown steadily into a successful unit which has now a membership of
nearly two hundred, including a few ladies. Twenty of its members
actually own plough engines. I think that it can be said, quite
truthfully, that this club has certainly stirred up an interest in
the now historical method of ploughing by steam.
In antiquity it was considered desirable, before launching out
upon new or doubtful projects, to consult oracles or look into the
entrails of animals for propitious signs. The Steam Plough Club
was, perhaps, lucky in that it had immediate unsolicited Divine
prompting, for the inspiration to form it came like a flash from
the blue whilst the writer was attending Sunday morning service in
the flint-walled hilltop village church at Bledlow Ridge in
Buckinghamshire. So blessed, the club’s luck has held good.
Action began with a dozen interested people having lunch in the
Great Northern Railway Hotel at Peterborough in Northamptonshire on
December 3, 1966. Over a very enjoyable meal, our minds animated by
a few light draughts of beer or wine, we talked about steam
ploughs, their boiler explosions and other mishaps, as well as
about their wonderful achievements in breaking up big acreages of
land. A private room in the hotel had been hired for an afternoon
meeting, at which we were joined by another dozen chaps. Taking
count, we found that we had people representative of nine English
counties, although at that time most of us were complete strangers.
It was decided to form a club with an annual membership fee of 1, a
figure which has not required increasing one cent during the
intervening eleven years, thanks to the good treasureship of bank
official Richard F. Jackson of Walsall in the West Midlands.
As I am talking about a British steam ploughing club, it has to
be said right at the beginning that practically all our activity
concerns cable type work, using a pair of engines, one on either
side of the field. Of the alternative methods: one stationary
engine with a fixed windlass and round-about style ropes passing
round the field, or the direct traction pulling the plough by the
engine style; the two remaining examples are preserved by Lt.
Commander, J. M. Baldock of Liphook, Hampshire, and Frank Smith of
Boston respectively.
Practical field operations began the following April when the
club staged a display of steam cultivating on the biggish and
well-managed farm of Brian Hailey at Great Wymondley near Hitchin
in north Hertfordshire. A cultivator is a three-wheeled,
self-turning implement having thirteen long strong tines and known
to the old steam ploughmen as a scarifier or drag. Batchelor farmer
Brian remembered with affection the steam ploughs which his
grandfather and father had used on the family farm; so he not only
welcomed us, but he also paid for the coal and counted the cost
against the cultivating of his field by the one pair of engines we
had in use. Mike Goodman brought his eighteen ton 1920 John Fowler
of Leeds compound AA7 class engine No. 15563, rated at 18 nominal
horsepower (about 175 i.h.p.) named Wayfarer. Bill Colebrook, a
motor maker in Vauxhall’s Luton works, came in with his 1917 AA
No. 13880, but since both engines were fitted up to pull their
ropes from the left side, Bill’s engine had to progress
backwards along its hedgerow. During the weekend the engines ripped
up about ten acres; but less than fifty people came to look at us.
Our only misfortune was to let the outside tines on the cultivator
tear out the bank alongside the narrow lane that led from the
village to the work site. This upset the tidy mind of Brian who
took five years to forget it and before he invited us on to his
land once more.
In 1968 there came the unexpected but welcome request from the
East Anglian Traction Engine Club (a much larger group) asking if
we would look after the pair of plough engines they would have at
work at their Hauxton, Cambridgeshire, rally. We snapped up this
chance to show our worth, made some red flags, identified our half
dozen stewards with armbands, saw that spectators kept clear of the
machinery, and that they did not wander about across the ploughing
where the slithering steel cables presented a hazard to careless
walkers. As our men were strangers to the area, it was excusable if
two of them asked the owner of the field (not knowing who he was)
to get off the ploughing. I did a commentary beside one of the
engines, telling folks something about the steam engines and their
implements. We also had a makeshift stall from which we sold a few
books and enrolled those who wanted to become members of our club.
All told, the affair was quite a success sufficient to get us the
award of a cup and 20 for the club funds.
From this modest beginning, the club went on to give this kind
of help to other clubs. We appeared at Great Shelford, Houghton
Conquest, Sudbury Mammoth Rallye (twice) Nettlebed, 18th World
Ploughing Contest in Somerset, Roxton Park (six yers), Asthall
(twice) Letchlade and Reevesby Fen. And, touch wood, so far no
accidents! Our first safety officer was Brian Parsons who worked
hard to ensure that nobody got hurt while the engines were at work.
We used to stop at hourly intervals in order that people might step
around to the pulling side of an engine and have a closer look at
the plough or cultivator that we happened to be using. Our present
safety officer is Pete Ware from Bedford. At last year’s
Asthall One Hundred Horses Ploughing Match, Pete, his wife Sandra
and two children left home at 4:00 A.M. in order to make sure that
the rope barriers were up long before the engines were ready to
begin work. Pete also makes certain that the owners of all engines
at our events can show current boiler and accident insurance
reports, in accordance with club requirements.
By 1971 we had fifty to sixty members and as things were going
so well, we decided upon a public show of our own. John Pryor,
squire in the little Hertfordshire village of Weston near Baldock
still had green memories of the Cooper digger owned and worked by
his grandfather, as well as of the pair of Fowler steam ploughs
that came on to the estate in his father’s time. ‘You can
come on my land,’ he said, ‘I will buy the coal and cart
the water and we will share any profit between the old church at
Weston and your club.’ That year it was jolly hot in July as we
worked on a big hillside field after the clover crop had been
carted. It was a lovely top of the world site with wide views over
the fields of waving barley creeping down the slopes into the
valley below and up again over the rolling, smooth-topped chalk
hills on the northern side.
For this show we had two pairs of engines: one pair ploughing
and the other cultivating. At the ploughing were Alec Ibbott’s
1919 BB class Fowler compound No. 15336 and Ron Ruff’s 1917 BB
No. 14383 ‘Prince.’ Both of these engines were rated as 16
nominal horsepower and would have been referred to by the old time
steam ploughmen as ‘A pair of sixteens!’ Alec is a gas
tractor salesman and Ron is in the agricultural contracting line.
The cultivating lower down was undertaken by farmer Charles Roads
of Caxton nearby with his AA No. 15451 ‘Victory,’ built in
1925, and Bill Colebrook’s AA already mentioned. These engines
were pulling the implement at a good six miles an hour, the proper
speed, to the mild surprise of one or two gas tractor men whose
crawler caterpillar machines took things a little less hurried. The
toughest ground, clay with flints, was found on the ploughing patch
where the ploughshares often rolled out jagged flints as big as
footballs. It was no wonder, therefore, that the ropes broke
several times and had to be spliced up. Running down the middle of
the ploughing was a deep hollow, over which the rope under tension
lifted quite ten feet into the air in a spectacular tight-rope
fashion.
The British Broadcasting Corporation took an interest in what we
were doing at this ‘Steam Ploughs at Work’ display and sent
a camera team out to us for two days. The short color film was
televised from London the following Monday evening. Some 3,000
folks paid to come into the field that weekend, and when we had
done our sums, we found that we had an encouraging profit of
350.
When Robert F. Oliver, a hospital equipment salesman, took over
from me as secretary in 1974, he at once set about publicity for
the club, seeking new members. The response was immediate and our
members crept up to the two hundred mark. The club chairman is
Esmond L. Lewis-Evans, a Rhodesian whose major preservation
interest has been running the South Eastern Steam Centre at Ashford
in Kent, where he has rented the old railroad locomotive shed from
the Southern Region of British Railways. Esmond’s great sense
of fair play, as projected from the chair at our meetings, has
doubtless kept us free from the sudden verbal thunderstorms that
arise at such gatherings elsewhere.
No club such as ours, with its widely scattered membership,
which ranges over Great Britain, Holland, Australia and Canada,
could keep its members holding hands without a quarterly
newsletter. Our young editor, Mick Place, of south London, does his
work well, partly because he happens to be a bachelor without too
many restrictions upon his comings and goings, and partly because
he is in inveterate traveller around all the steam scenes in this
country. Mick knows all the steam chaps, their engines and
everything else connected with our preservation movement. His only
fault is that he hankers a little after those horrible conversions
of steam ploughs into diesel engine-powered units.
One of the more recent achievements of the club has been the
making of a twenty-three minute color film ‘Ploughing by
Steam,’ under the professional eye and hand of retired film
maker John Rogers of Harpenden near Luton. Some members were, quite
naturally, a bit wary about the club laying out around 350 for the
making of this film. However, it has turned out to be a success,
having been hired out to a hundred or more showings in the UK, and
seven copies have already been sold, one has even gone to
Australia. Our aim with this film was to show how steam cultivation
work was done, as well as a few other field jobs for which plough
engines are suitable. Both the shots and the accompanying narration
are presented in an easy-to-follow-manner, and all the elementary
questions are answered.
During 1977 the club hopes to have another public display of
steam cultivation, and it also hopes to be associated with two
horse and tractor ploughing matches in October when our members
steam ploughs will be at work. The club’s secretary is Vic H.
Burrough, 94, Harvist Road, Kensal Rise, London NW6 6HL, England.
If any of your readers in the States are coming over this side and
would like to make our acquaintance in company with some of the
finest steam engines we have in this country, would they please
write to Vic. Shakespeare has a wealth of characters in his plays,
but kings and villians apart, we can match him among the members of
this club for color.
