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When we moved to Glyn-Coch in 2000, we brought with us a rare David Brown 2d tractor. This proved popular with many visitors (especially the younger, and older ones) to our craft shop. One of our suppliers, whose family used to run the Gower Farm Museum. mentioned that they were trying to find a home for some of their exhibits. All the Gower exhibits had originally been owned and used by one family, and they formed a wonderful snapshot of farming in a particular place and time. We hope that by keeping this collection together we can show something of the individuality of traditional farms.
If you would like information on our machinery or on our machinery display, please do not hesitate to Contact Us.
As part of the machinery collection we have: |
A hay sweep (this type is also known as a 'Tumbling Jenny' ) was used to make hay in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is mainly made of wood, with metal swivels at the ends of the red heel bar. A horse is attached to these swivels and walks in front of the sweep. The operator walks behind, holding onto the curved handles. The machine travels at right angles to the rows of hay, and picks up hay on the wooden tines as it goes. As the tips of the tines reach the row, the operator lifts the handles, the tip of the tines contact the ground, and (with the horse continuing to walk forward) the whole machine summersaults, throwing the hay it had collected on the tines, into the row. As the horse continues the machine settles upright again, and the tines collect more hay until it gets to the next row and the whole process is repeated.
What wonderful horses they had, to work all day with all that going on behind them, and with the operator mainly using voice commands as their hands were occupied with the handles!
This seed barrow was made by Pierce of Wexford just up the road from the Irish ferry port at Rosslaire. The 21 little brushes in the box push seed through adjustable holes in the back of the box. The brushes are driven by the barrow wheel. I would guess that this machine is about 60 years old, but the seed box itself (or at least boxes of similar design) are still used to trickle grass seed over a roller when fields are being resown with grass.
The seed barrow provides a good example of how different farms are from one another. A visitor told me that they had used a seed barrow on small (1/2acre) market garden plots, on a clay soil. It was such hard work that they used a horse to pull the barrow. Another visitor told me that he had sown 16 acres (of linseed) on his own on a light chalk soil in Dorset. (To cover 16 acres he would have had to push the barrow for about 15 miles, perhaps 5 hours continuous pushing. With, 20 to 30 breaks to refill with seed, and the walk to and from the seed bags, this would have been a good days work, even if he did not need a horse!)
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These shearing machines are on loan from the old Gower Farm Museum. The oldest is a Lister machine of 1906. Research which lead to the design included counting the numbers of fibres per square inch of fleece of every breed of sheep in the UK, and resulted in a design in which many features have not been improved on in the subsequent 100 years. Nevertheless the machine did not sell at all well when it was launch in 1906. It took international events 8 years later to decrease the labour supply, and increase the demand for wool for this machine to reach its peak of popularity. Machines of this design were still in use in the 1950s, but the smaller hand turned machine was only replaced for some stock shearing jobs by the advent of efficient battery powered machines at the turn of the present millennium.
The unusual David Brown 2D was designed just after WWII to tempt farmers who were still using horses to convert to tractor power. In spite of glowing reviews from the agricultural press and universal adulation from professors of agricultural engineering, the tractor failed to impress its target audience. However, to market gardeners it was the answer to their prayers. Carrying the plough between the axles meant that maximum use could be made of very valuable market garden land, and the driver's ability to operate weeding hoes on his own without the second man required by conventional tractors completely changed the lives of market gardening families. Several times I have been told that during the war whole families struggled to operate 5 acre gardens, but after the war acquisition of a "2D" meant that the children could go back to school, the uncles and aunts got jobs in the city and earned 'proper money', and 'Dad ran the garden on his own, and then bought another 5 acres'. They often finish the story by saying, "...and that's how we bought our first Rolls Royce"
Our tractor was built in 1959, but was purchased by Rothamsted Experimental Station in 1970 to help find ways of controlling very damaging eelworm. The team at Rothamsted was very successful, both nationally and internationally. The 2D proved to have advantages for another audience not foreseen by its makers. Initially the team used chemicals to control the pest, but they soon realised that it was not necessary to apply chemical to all the soil in order to protect the crop. What they needed was a toll that could place the chemical near the roots of the crop. The team's engineer would drive the 2D and watch the movement of soil around various prototype application devices. (This would not have been possible on a conventional tractor.) Eventually the applicator they designed was adopted by a major multinational chemical company as its tool of choice for applying its products. By the time I became involved with that team (in the mod 80's) they were using the tractor for experiments with non-chemical control.
If you would like a leaflet about the tractor send £3 and a (10cm x 21cm) self addressed envelope to us
If you own a 2D and would like technical information contact the 2D Register
The BMB Ploughmate Tractor was described as "The Rolls Royce" of two wheeled tractors. It could be used to power various implements including a 4 ft front mounted finger bar mower, or as shown, a general purpose single furrow plough. When ploughing it needed both heavy wheel weights, and a nose weight to give it the necessary traction.
BMB stands for the British Motor Boat company, so why they were selling tractors is a bit of a mystery, but they did and by all accounts they were very good. Another claim to fame for this company is that, when he wasn't organising the Bedouin resistance to to the German war effort in the first world war, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) used to sell speed boats for BMB.
We have more machinery at Glyn-Coch than is listed above including an Allen Scythe, a pair of horse drawn ploughs etc etc.
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