Scottish agricultural implement makers

Back in the 1950s and 1960s when the great engineering minds were trying to develop a satisfactory potato harvester that would lift the crop without the need of squad labour, you still required a number of workers on the back of the harvester.  They lifted all the tatties off the moving belt which were taken away to the tattie box or trailer, leaving the large amounts of rubbish from stones, clods and rots to be conveyed and dropped back onto the ground.  The workers worked furiously: it was still hard work.  It was even worse when there was a damp bit drill and the whole drill came up the harvester and the tatties had to be removed from the drill sitting on top of the sorting table.  You had sore finger ends by the end of the day! And you knew about it!

Back in these days there were quite a number of attempts to develop a satisfactory harvester.  But many of the machines were large and complicated.  They were also heavy and cumbersome to work with.  The key was to get the design as simple as possible.

In 1966 Johnston’s (Implements) Scotland Ltd, of Colquhoun Street, Stirling, exhibited a potato harvester at the Highland Show, also entering it for the new implement award.  It was the Johnson/Underhaug model 1510 potato harvester, invented by Messrs F. A. Underhaug (Fabrik), Stavanger, Norway.  It was made by Messrs F. A. Underhaug in association with Messrs Johnson’s (Engineering) Ltd, and sold for £600.

This one row harvester was described as being “an entirely new concept in potato harvesters”.  It used the spinner digger principle for lifting the tatties from the ground.  The harvester was fully mounted to the back of the harvester, connected by the three-point hydraulic linkage.  A lifting share cut the bottom of the drill and brought the drill and its contents in contact with a spinning reel which spun the potatoes onto a cross-elevator where the surplus soil was riddled out.  Trash and haulm were removed at the top of the conveyor and stones deflected onto a cross-conveyor. The remaining contents of the drill was brought onto a sorting table, and the tatties removed from any waste that was brought up with them. They passed onto a trailer or bagging platform mounted onto the front of the trailer.

The harvester was a successful one for the smaller growers: it was extremely compact, lightweight, would work well on steep ground and in wet conditions, was very gentle on the tatties and and could be easily manoeuvred.  If you worked steadily with it you could harvest up to 2 acres a day.  It was one of the harvesters that was in production for a long period: its production was taken over and marketed by Ransomes as the “Ransomes Faun” and then by the 1990s it was sold by Kverneland as the Superfaun.

Ransomes marketed the Faun as the “handy harvester”, an appropriate name for a really practical harvester.  But you still had sore fingers from working with it.  They continued to be sore until stone and clod separation came along and revolutionised the tattie harvest.  But that is another story.

Source: Highland Show implement catalogue, 1966.

© 2016 Heather Holmes

The Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland provided (as it still does) an important stimulus for the development of new and innovative agricultural implements and machines. In the past, an important feature of its activities was to hold trials. These included trials of potato diggers.

The Society’s first trial of potato diggers was held on 30 September 1871. A total of nine machines were selected for trial, most of which were both made and exhibited by the makers: Mallard’s Trent Foundry Co, Rugeley, Law, Duncan & Co., Shettleston, J. Bisset & Sons, Marlee, Blairgowrie, William Dewar, Kellas, Dundee, John Doe, Errol, John Hanson (entered by John Wallace & Sons, Glasgow), James Mollison, Ruthven, Meigle,
James Robertson, Coupar Angus, and Robert Stewart, Buttergask, Coupar Angus. It is interesting to note how many of these makers were Scottish, and more particularly, how many of them were located in the major potato-growing districts of eastern Scotland, especially Perthshire.

Following the trial, medium silver medals were warded to six of the exhibitors, five of which were located in Perthshire and Dundee.

The next trial was held on 18 and 19 October 1881 on the farm of
Hillhead, near Stirling. The judges considered thatt the trial was “very satisfactory both to judged and exhibitors, and that it was conducted in a thoroughly exhaustive manner.” They noted that “eleven machines appeared on the ground; the work, on the whole, was satisfactory, but the draught was in the opinion of the judges a great drawback to the whole of the machines, the lightest draught being 4 1/4 cwt up to 6 cwt under very favourable circumstances of soil. The judges would draw the attention of the makers of these machines to this objection.” Three awards were given: J. D. Allan & Sons, Culthill, Dunked (£15), William Dewar, Strathmartine, Dundee (£10) and John Wallace & Sons, 7 Graham Square, Glasgow (£5).

In 1911 the Society arranged a further trial of tattle diggers or lifters. Given the length of time since the 1881 trial, this was a much anticipated event, and an important milestone in for the development and improvement of potato lifters.

By this time the Society recognised the need to encourage the development of tattle diggers, more especially so as significant advances were being made in the mechanisation of the grain harvest. Entries were to be on “entirely new principles, or possess radical improvements on machines now in use.” Each machine was also to have been exhibited at the Highland Show in inverness in 1911.

Implement and machine makers took to the challenge and fourteen machines were entered for trial. Signifiant numbers of Scottish makers with outstanding reputations in making tattle diggers came forward: J D Allan & Son, Murthly, Alexander Ballach & Sons, Leith, J. Bisset & Sons Ltd, Blairgowrie, Andrew Pollock, Machine, John Wallace & Sons, Glasgow, and David Wilson, East Linton.

The trial, held at Turnhouse, Cramond, Midlothian, on 5 October 1911, was watched by a large number of spectators. The machines included some “novel” and “interesting” features. The machine from John Wallace & Sons had a rotating arm carrying the grapes or tines set at one side of the drill, and the tines were set so that they entered the drill laterally and lifted it up.

The judges concluded that the work done by all the machines was “fairly good” and “showed improvement as compared with the results obtained at the last trial.” However, there was no outstanding machine. As a result, equal premiums were awarded to machines from Allan, Pollock, Wallace and Wilson.

What the trial achieved was to stimulate the development in tattle diggers and to try to find ways to make diggers more effective. Like the 1881 trials, they went down in the annals of the Society’s work to encourage technological innovation.

The photographs of the spinner diggers were taken at the Fife Vintage Agricultural Machinery Club Farming Heritage Show and Annual Rally, June 2016.

© 2016 Heather Holmes

The tattle spinner was patented By J. Hanson, in 1855. By 1875 there were a number of makers of spinner diggers in Scotland whose names continued to be associated with that machine until well into the twentieth century.

They included J. D. Allan & Sons, Culthill, Dunkeld, J. Bisset & Sons, Blairgowrie, James Gordon, Castle Douglas, Andrew Pollock, Machine, Ayrshire (Later A. & W. Pollock), and John Wallace & Sons, Glasgow.

The 1950s was an important decade for the development of the complete or the mechanical potato harvester which could lift, sort and deliver potatoes into bags or into trailers.  If you were a Scottish farmer looking to purchase one of these harvesters you would have had to look to manufacturers outwith the country.

In 1952 makers included the Byfleet Machine & Tool Co. Ltd, of Byfleet, Surrey, with its tractor drawn “Thorn” potato harvester which put potatoes into a trailer.  Globe Harvester Co. Ltd, Wellington Road, Colney, had its tractor drawn “Globe” potato harvester which could deliver potato into bags or trailers.  Johnson (Engineering) Ltd, Elliot Road, March, Cambridgeshire had two models, its tractor drawn “Johnson” (worked by p-t-o or Petter engine drawn) and its “Johnson Junior”, p-t-o driven.  Mines Manufacturing Co. of Oxford, sold its “Minns” which could also be used for harvesting sugar-beet.  Modern Designs Ltd, Twyford, Berkshire, had the tractor drawn “Packman”, also powered either by p-t-o or engine driven. Root Harvesters Ltd, Fengate, Peterbough, sold the “Whistles”, a model that was among one of the well-known harvesters.  Wota Ltd, Wolverhampton had its “Wota-Crawford” tractor mounted machine.  Machines had an output of between 2-4 acres per day.

By 1963 the names and companies that were making complete potato harvesters has altered radically.  They included: Benedict (Agricultural) Ltd, Gordon V. Clark Ltd, Dominion Export Co. Ltd, Johnson’s Engineering Ltd, Logan Engineering Ltd, Massey Ferguson (U.K.) Ltd, Root Harvesters Ltd, John Salmon Engineering Co. Ltd, and W. T. Teague (Machinery) Ltd.

Despite the numbers of companies manufacturing complete harvesters by 1960, there were relatively small numbers working in Scotland. In 1960 in Fife there were 8 machines at work, while in Perthshire there were between 20-30 machines at work.  In 1961 in Aberdeenshire there were 28 machines in operation. In Angus there were at least 100 in operation.  Their number had increased rapidly in Fife, with 25 harvesters being used in 1961.  In Morayshire it was estimated that 40% of the crop was being harvested by machine.  There continued to be a further increased by the following year.  In the Lothians, one notable feature was the number of potato harvesters at work.  Mechanisation made important inroads into the potato field the 1960s.

Why the sudden increase in the use of the complete harvester in the early 1960s?  While there were continued technical developments, an important source of labour, that of school children, was being substantilally reduced by the education authorities, with the aim of ceasing the release of children from school after the 1962 harvesters.  The situation forced farmers to look at their labour requirements, and the source of labour for the harvest.  While some farmers decided to stop growing potatoes, others ventured into mechanical harvesting as the way forward for securing the potato crop. It was a big step to take.

Further information on the mechanisation of the potato harvest in the Lothians and Scotland is available in Heather Holmes, “As good as a holiday”: Potato harvesting in the Lothians from 1870 to the present, East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000.

The photographs show harvesting at Orchardfield, Wilkieston, West Lothian, October 1990.

 

© 2016 Heather Holmes

The tattle holidays are a well-recollected and remembered custom that took place in many rural districts.  However, there was another way in which children were released from school to help with the potato harvest.  This was by the “potato exemptions” or “tattie exemptions”.  They were just as important for releasing children from school attendance to work at the tattie harvest until 1962.

Whereas tattie holidays were given to all children in a school, or to certain years, tattie exemptions were given to individual children.  These children were permitted to leave school for a specified time while the school remained open.  They were usually given where there were fewer children employed at the tattle harvest, with other types of workers, such as locally employed women or Irish workers being more widely employed.

Schools and educational authorities often attached conditions to the granting of exemptions.  They included a high level of school attendance in the preceding year or evidence that the money from work at the tattle harvest would provide necessary financial assistance.  They ensured that the absence from school was both necessary and appropriate.

The ability to release individual children from school to engage in agricultural activities was permitted in legislation from 1878.  This was generally educational legislation, though legislation relating to the employment of children also had a role to play.

Exemptions were especially widely used during the Second World War when tatties were grown on an extensive scale and children were employed in large numbers throughout the country to harvest the crop.  With the end of the War and changes to the educational legislation in 1946 it was no longer possible to release children for work at the tattle harvest by means of the tattie exemptions.
Because of the important role that the children continued to play in harvesting the large acreages of crop, at a time when the food situation continued to be critical, special legislation had to be introduced that permitted their continued employment.  This was the Education (Exemptions) (Scotland) Act 1947.  It was an act to allow children over the age of 14 years to be released from school to assist in the tattle harvest.

The Act was a very hot potato.  There was widespread opposition from the educational authorities and educational unions at the continued employment of children at the tattie harvest.  Not all politicians were in favour of it.  Indeed, it was a politically very difficult act to bring forward.  So that it would get through Parliament it was designed as a short lived act, continued for one or two years at a time under the expiring laws continuance legislation. This approach ensured that the legislation was only used where there was a clear need for it.

The Government continued to carefully monitor the food and labour situations as well as the development of a complete harvester which would bring to an end the need to exempt children for the tattle harvest.  But though the Act was to fall after 1949, there was a continued need for the continued us of tattie exemptions.  Indeed, in 1950 some 37,000 children were granted exemption over a three week period to work at the tattie harvest throughout Scotland.

In following years the annual debates in the Commons were hotly debated, and rarely in favour of the legislation.  The number of exemptions were carefully monitored and numbers of exemptions allocated to each education authority.

By the late 1950s farmers had to look for other sources of labour before they would be given the services of children.  Numbers of exemptions were cut dramatically.  By the late 1950s, the Government announced that 1962 would be the last year exemptions were given to Scottish schoolchildren.  Thereafter, farmers would have to look for their own labour.

The tattie exemptions were a very hot potato, and much more so than the tattie holidays.  But while they were hotly debated in Parliament, their continued need showed just how important the employment of school children was at the tattie harvest in a large number of counties of Scotland well after the end of the Second World War, and also when other war-time measures had come to an end.

The photographs shows a squad of children at Blair Mains, Culross, Fife in 1990. They were employed during the potato holidays.

 

© 2016 Heather Holmes

 

Many, if not all of us, will be aware of the “tattle holidays” a holiday given from school for a week or a fortnight during the month of October, at the time of the potato harvest, to enable school children to help at the potato harvest.

In some districts of Scotland children were an important source of labour for harvesting the crop.  For farmers and other agriculturists it was important that they could draw on the services of the children.  By the 1870s teachers and their school boards were not happy to see empty classrooms and schools as children went to the tatties instead of attending school; neither were the school inspectors or members of the school boards.  And the Scotch Education Department – as it was known back then – considered this a serious problem.  Potato harvesting became a “standing grievance” or even “an evil”.  This was more especially so when school grants were paid on attendance: large numbers of children absent at the tatties did not help the school managers secure their grant for the year.
Teachers, school mangers and the Scotch Education Department looked for ways to deal with this “evil”.  As schools were required to have a certain number of openings, the period of the summer holiday could be shortened and the corresponding period given in October to allow the children to assist with the tatties.  So started the “tattie holidays” in some rural districts of Scotland.

It was up to individual school boards to decide whether they needed to grant a tattie holiday, and how long that holiday would be.  The earliest ones varied from one to three weeks, with two weeks being widespread.  Neighbouring parishes could have holidays of different lengths.  One could have a holiday while a neighbouring parish did not.

Even where tattie holidays were a well-established feature of the rural calendar, they were not always given every year.  When the dates and duration of the school summer holiday was considered there was, at times, lengthy discussion on whether a tattie holiday should be given.  That discussion and decision led to friction between farmers, parents and children and the education authorities.
There were often headlines in the press noting dissatisfaction of the holidays being granted or refused. on 4 May 1933 the Dundee Courier carried the headline “Potato holiday ban removed”.  It noted how “Angus County Council yesterday turned down a recommendation of the Education Committee that potato holidays be discontinued.”  There were extensive protests, petitions submitted, and deputations heard. It was a subject that raised passions.

Tattie holidays were widely given during the time of the two world wars, where it was important that the increased potato acreage was safely gathered.  After 1946 the attitude towards children picking or gathering tatties hardened.  But by this time the tattie holiday was a well-established feature of life in many communities.  So important was it in Perthshire that when the education authority tried to ban the holiday shortly after the end of the Second World War there were protests, and the authority had to back down and grant it. Some parts of Scotland, especially Perthshire, continued to grant potato holidays in following decades while others did not.

By the 1980s when the tattie crop was increasingly being harvested by complete harvesters, there was less need for tattle holidays to be given. But by that time educationalists started to consider that an autumn break for the children in October was a good thing: it broke up the long period from the end of the summer holidays until Christmas.  They had held a long-standing view that children should have a long summer holiday and to enjoy the warmer weather, than have two weeks in the colder and darker month of October.  So, the autumn holiday started across Scotland. Because of the strength of the custom of the tattie holidays – they had become an institutionalised custom by this time – they continued to be known as the tattie holidays, even though eventually children no longer came to undertake that work.

As well as being an institutional custom, these holidays were also a rite of passage for many children across Scotland.  For many children it was their first wage and experience of paid work.  The money formed an important part of the wages coming into households, paying for essential items such as boots and coats, or even Christmas.  And of course, the boilings made an important contribution to the larder.

The photographs of the children at the potato harvest were taken at Blair Mains, Culross, in October 1990. The children were from Crossgates, Fife.

 

© 2016 Heather Holmes

By 1905 Wright Brothers of the Boyne Mills, Portsoy, made reapers, drillers and threshing mills.  It was their threshing mills, and as a millwright that the company was especially renowned.

At a trial of threshing mills in the parish of Auchterless in March 1908 the Aberdeen Journal favourably described one of the company’s mills:

“Mr James Gammie, tenant of the farms of Knockleith and Netherthird, Auchterless, has had a first-class new threshing machine placed in his barn at the last-named farm.  The machine has been in use for some time, but has only recently had all the connections fully completed, and it was yesterday put on trial.  The trial was carried out in presence of the millwright and a considerable number of interested agriculturists.  The mill is driven by a 12-feet water wheel, with steel buckets.  It is 3 feet 6 inches wide, with rollers and crank shakers.  It is fitted with all modern dressing appliances, and deposits the grain, completely dressed for market, at any desired point, in a spacious loft, from a moving spout over the rafters.  The chaff is driven by a blast to a byre, 80 feet distant, and in its course turns a right angle, where the barn joins the stable wing. When delivered, the chaff is free from short straw, and in fine form for bedding purposes.  The machine is guaranteed to thresh and dress 8 quarters of grain per hour, and on trial, with somewhat damp and rank oats-a severe test-was easily doing one bushel per minute.  The wood-work is of well-dressed and varnished pitch-pine, and the whole workmanship and materials reflect the highest credit on the engineers-Messrs Wright Brothers, Portsoy, Banffshire.  A powerful corn bruiser in pitch-pine frame, and driven by an intermediate shift from the water wheel, has also been placed in the barn by the same engineers.”

From the 1920s the focus of the company’s activities was on threshing mills.  At the Highland Show in Inverness in 1932 it exhibited its full finishing threshing mills and single dressing mills.  At that show the Aberdeen Journal noted that “many of the firm’s friends and customers in the North-Eastern counties are certain to pay a visit to this stand and see how these mills are equipped in the most up-to-date fashion”.

In February 1927 the Dundee Courier described the installation of a new threshing plant from the Wright Brothers.  It wrote favourably of this new installation:

“A complete threshing installation, consisting of an Allan oil engine 17hp, together with 42 in-high power mill and Bissett trusser, and a grain conveyor, have been installed by Mr James Syme, Wormit Farm.
There was a large gathering yesterday of friends in the district to witness the installation of the mill, which was typical of the class of work done by the well-known makers, Wright Bros., Portsoy, and was supplied by Messrs H. W. Mathers & Son, Perth, the local agents.”

Another account by the Aberdeen Journal in November 1936, was also favourable:

“Mr Leslie Duncan, Netherton, Fisherfield, Rothienorman, has installed a new threshing plant.  The mill is one of the latest types, high speed, and three-feet wide, with sizing screen, barley owner, double fans, and a chaff and cuffing blast to covered court.  The grain is conveyed to the roof by elevators and carried along the loft by belt with clocks in a case, with trapdoors to let the grain fall where desired.  The whole of the spindles are run on ball bearings, and the mill is driven by a powerful Allan oil engine.  Messrs Wright Bros., Portsoy, were the makers, and on a trial the plant gave every satisfaction.”

The company moved with the times.  By the mid 1950s it was described in trade directories as an agricultural engineer, implement, machinery and equipment dealer and manufacturers, and as dairy engineers, dairy farm equipment suppliers.

However, changing times in agriculture also brought an end to the company. Incorporated as Wright Bros. (Boyne Mills) Ltd, on 28 June 1948, the company passed an extraordinary resolution to voluntarily wind up its activities on 7 February 1955.  Its final winding up meeting was held on 17 October 1956.

The Wright Bros threshing machine was photographed at New Deer Show, August 2014.

 

© 2016 Heather Holmes

One of the big names in wrought iron stack stools until the outbreak the First World War was Thomas Gibson & Son, Edinburgh.  The company started as Gibson & Tait, at Bainfield, Fountainbridge, Edinburgh. It was already trading in 1868.  The partnership of J. Charles Tait and Thomas Gibson was dissolved by mutual consent by the partners on 1873.  After that date the business was carried on by Mr Gibson. 

© 2016 Heather Holmes

While we may think of the tattie spinner as an “old” machine, it was patented by J. Hanson in 1855.  Before that year, and also well-into the twentieth century, a much older implement was used to harvest the potato crop: the potato plough.

Henry Stephens described the use of the potato plough in his The Book of the Farm in 1844.  He writes:

“In employing the plough to take up potatoes, the common one, with 2 horses, answers well; but as the potatoes run the hazard of being split by the coulter when it comes in contact with them, it should be taken out, the sock being sufficient to enter the plough below the drill, and the mould-board to turn them out of it.  The plough in going up splits one drill, and in returning splits the next, but no faster than a band of gatherers, of field-workers, if numerous enough, but if not, assisted by hired labourers, can clear the ground of them into the baskets.  In free soil potatoes are easily seen and picked up; heavier soil is apt to adhere to them, in which case it is a good plan to make a stout field-worker shake those portions of the earth turned up by the plough, which still adhere in lumps, with a potato grain, and expose the tubers.”

Given the labour-intensive nature of the plough, developments were made to improve it for harvesting potatoes.  By 1844 John Lawson of Elgin had developed a mouldboard shaped device of six malleable iron bars which were attached to the right side of the head and stilt of the plough.  For Stephens, this had a number of advantages: “The mode of operation of the brander is, that while the earth partly passes through it, and is partly placed aside by it, the potatoes are wholly laid aside, so there are few of them but are left exposed on the surface of the ground.”

Lawson’s potato plough or brander was drawn by a pair of horses: “in working it, the ploughman inserts it into the potato drill so as to have the whole of the potatoes on his right-hand side.  He then proceeds along the drill, splitting it up in the common way.  The earth is this thrown to the right-hand side, and the potatoes lie scattered on the surface of the ground behind the plough.  Women follow, provided with baskets, into which they gather the potatoes, and throw the stems upon the drill which lies to the right hand side of one from which they are gathering the potatoes. … A man with 1 pair of horses will thus pass over the ground as quickly as with the common plough.  In light soils this plough performs its work in a very efficient manner.  It pulverises the soil in an extraordinary degree, and scarcely leaves a single potato in the soil.”

In 1889 the potato plough was used to harvest the tattie crop in certain sitiuations.  Henry Stephens notes:
“On farms where the potato-digger has not been introduced, or on fields very steep and otherwise unsuitable for the digger, the aid of a plough of one kind or other is usually invoked in lifting potatoes.  In some cases the double mould-board plough is used; in others, it is the ordinary single furrow swing-plough; in others, the American chill plough; while not a few employ specially fitted “potato-ploughs”.

He adds that: “The “potato plough” may be an entirely distinct implement, or an ordinary plough fitted with a potato-raiser-a series of iron or steel fingers running out from one or both sides of the body of the plough.
The specially fitted ploughs are certainly superior to the ordinary ploughs for lifting potatoes, yet it is generally agreed that if a separate implement is to be procured for this work, that implement should be the potato-digger proper.”

Potato ploughs continued to be used well into the twentieth century.  By that time they tended to be used for specialist tasks, such as harvesting first earlies which required to be gently handled. But they still remained one of the ways in which potatoes were harvested in Scotland.  The others were the spinner digger, the elevator digger, and the mechanical harvester which was starting to be developed to alleviate the problems of securing sufficient labour to harvest the potato crop.

The photographs of the potato ploughs were taken at the Fife Vintage Agricultural Machinery Club Farming Heritage Show and Annual Rally, June 2016 and at the Highland Folk Museum, Newtonmore, May 2015.

 

© 2016 Heather Holmes