THE LITTLE GREY FERGIE.

[Stanley]

THE LITTLE GREY FERGIE.

01 January 2003

The great virtue of the Fordson tractor that invaded the local farms in 1940 was that it didn’t need new machinery, you simply took the shafts off your horse drawn tackle, put a simple draw bar on and hitched it up. However this limited the tractor to simple haulage work and as time went on other engineers started to take an interest. The most important of these was a man called Harry Ferguson.
Harry Ferguson was born in Ireland in 1884 and all his life he was a compulsive innovator in engineering. In 1917 he started to develop his thoughts about improving agricultural tractors for the Irish government and by the mid 1930s he had his ideas fixed and was ready for production. I don’t know whether he realised it at the time but he was going to start a revolution in tractor design. His ideas were so radically different that they were going to change the face of agriculture. Every tractor produced today all over the world embodies his original concept of a machine that didn’t simply replace the horse, it changed everything by becoming a multi-purpose power source and the core of a whole new concept in farming. What became known as the Ferguson System was a hydraulic lift fitted to the rear of the tractor and special implements which were attached directly to the tractor giving great improvements in control, grip and handling.
Harry went to various motor manufacturers for help and almost reached an agreement with the Morris Motor Company but when this fell through in 1933 he started his own factory in Belfast. He went into partnership with a firm that made gearboxes at Huddersfield and David Brown Tractors was born. At this point the tractor still looked like a Fordson fitted with Ferguson Hydraulics.
In 1938 Ferguson visited Henry Ford on his farm. He took one of his Ferguson-Brown tractors with him and demonstrated it. Henry was so impressed he immediately came to an agreement with Harry whereby Ford would manufacture the tractor and Ferguson would market it. There was no paperwork, this was the famous ‘Handshake Agreement’ that led to Ferguson collaborating with Ford to re-design the tractor. The result was the Ford-Ferguson 9N which was the first ‘Grey Fergie’.
By 1947 Henry Ford and his son Edsel were dead and Henry Ford II was in charge. He terminated the sales agreement with Harry Ferguson but continued manufacturing the Ford-Ferguson. This triggered Harry to find a new partner and he found one in the Standard Car Company in Coventry. Production of a new tractor, the Ferguson TE20 started using the engine out of the Standard Vanguard and the English Grey Fergie was born.
In 1953 Harry Ferguson and Massey-Harris merged and in 1957 Harry sold out and died in 1960. The factory was a huge success and in all, over half a million Grey Fergies were made at Banner Lane until it was superseded by a new design in 1956. The factory went on to become the largest tractor manufacturers in the world. The Grey Fergie became so popular that there can’t be many farms in the district that haven’t used one at some time or other, they became one of the family. My picture this week shows Colin Barritt at Kayfield on their Fergie. This was taken in hay time and a Fergie with the right implements could take much of the back-breaking toil out of the job, this applied to all the other jobs on the farm and it became possible for one man to run a small holding.
This revolution, together with the rise of road transport and cars spelt the death knell for the cart makers and wheelwrights, stables all over Barlick were converted to other uses. Apart from a few jobs like milk retailing or rag and bone collecting, the horse became a curiosity. I can remember my mother sending me out into the road to collect horse muck for her roses when I was a lad in the 1940’s, this became thin on the ground.
So, to go back to my original theme last week, all changes lead to some disruption, that’s the reason why human beings are so wary about it. Our cloth was priced out of the market and 20 mills vanished in Barlick and Earby. The horses went because the internal combustion engine drove them out. The tractors at Banner Lane have gone because it’s cheaper to produce them elsewhere. The lesson is that no industry or way of life is immune from these upheavals, all we can hope is that the accountants show a little more sensitivity the next time they have bad news for us.

01 January 2003

[Gloria]

We had a little grey Fergie in the late 80s, good, honest little tractor.

[Stanley]

I don't think I ever met anyone who disliked the Fergie!