Following the end of the Second World War, Britain experienced a baby boom which is said to have lasted up until 1964.
However, the country experienced another boom during the same period, which was the boom of the British tractor industry.
Britain’s tiny industry had stumbled through the pre-war depression and throughout the war with only Fordson, David Brown and Marshall building tractors, and the latter two heavily restricted by other wartime contracts.
Fordson produced no less than 137,483 tractors from Dagenham during the conflict, which amounted to 85% of the nation’s tractor population.
With the limited numbers produced by DB and Marshall unable to make up the shortfall, the Lease Lend agreement with the USA allowed for tractors and farm machinery to be imported via the vulnerable Atlantic convoys.
By 1945 Britain was virtually broke and her industrial capacity worn out. The nation’s finances decreed that dollar imports had to be reduced, and the disruption of war meant the food situation was worse than before.
Tractors were needed more and more and, although numbers had risen from 55,000 in 1939 to 140,000 by D-Day, the demand was insatiable as many returning troops called up from land-based industries declined to return to them.
Thankfully many of Britain’s manufacturers had benefited from new technologies forced through by war and, with the ending of Government contracts, had the spare capacity for new products.
Tractors were an obvious choice due to the demand of cash-rich farmers needing to tool up.
Fordson, who had done so much to feed Britain with its ubiquitous little Fordson N, launched its slightly larger and improved E27N, later improved to the Diesel Major.
David Brown of Meltham offered its improved VAK 1A model, shortly to be replaced by the popular Cropmaster.
Marshall of Gainsborough continued with its dated single-cylinder diesel engine models now branded as the Field Marshall, a reference to the military success during the war.
Many North American manufacturers who had sold large numbers into Britain during the war circumvented the restrictions on dollar imports by setting up manufacturing facilities over here.
Allis Chalmers had been popular since pre-war days and had a depot at Totton near Southampton which saw the British-built Model B assembled for five years after the war.
In 1950 they moved to a new factory at Essendine near Stamford in Lincolnshire.
Previous to AC arriving at Essendine it had assembled the post-war American Minneapolis Moline tractors to a British design using a choice of two UK-built diesel engines, the Dorman and the Meadows.
The tractors were expensive and did not sell well, and therefore it was a short-lived affair.
Being Canadian and part of the Commonwealth, Massey Harris had a strong relationship with the UK and a base at Trafford Park in Manchester which saw the assembly of some tractors and machinery.
The Government’s ill-fated groundnut scheme of 1946 encouraged MH to increase machinery and, more importantly, tractor production, and in 1949 it opened a factory at Kilmarnock to allow its 744 tractors, combines and balers to be produced.
Caterpillar, too, had a Scottish production site, with crawlers intended for the construction industry being built at Uddingston from 1958.
International Harvester had already made a start by purchasing a factory site at Doncaster in 1938.
After the war the company constructed implements before launching the British-built Farmall BM in 1949.
Latterly it also produced tractors at the old Jowett factory near Bradford.
Roadless of Hounslow was famous for converting Fordson and other skid units into half, full-track and four-wheel-drive tractors, as was County of Fleet in Hampshire.
Others were Ernest Doe of Ulting in Essex and Muir Hill of Manchester which converted Fordsons into machines for construction before entering the agricultural tractor market in the late 1960s.
Matbro had developed articulated pivot steering and launched its Fordson Major based Matbro Mastiff from its base at Frome in Somerset in 1962.
Crawler tractors were eventually ousted by four-wheel drive but they had an important place prior to this so important, in fact, that the dollar import restrictions did not apply to tracklayers.
This, however, did not stop a large number of UK concerns taking up the track-laying baton.
Using track laying experience gained from designing the Bren Carrier, Vivian Loyd offered his post-war Loyd Dragon crawler from Camberley in Surrey.
Another small-scale crawler builder was Rotary Hoes of East Horndon in Essex, more famous for its Rotavators.
However it did offer its Howard Platypus, which was originally based on a Fowler FD2 model, during the 1950s.
Fowler of Leeds had its origins in steam but built a range of crawlers in the 1930s as well as its famous Gyrotiller machines.
At the end of the war it offered its FD range to the Thos Ward Group, who also owned Marshall of Gainsborough in 1946.
Subsequent integration resulted in the launch of the Marshall single-cylinder diesel-engined Fowler VF in 1947.
Other less well known crawler manufacturers which disappeared very quickly were Fraser of London and Glave of Northampton.
The specialist Cuthbertson of Biggar’s Water Buffalo and the mighty Vickers designed for construction and built in Newcastle were a little bit different.
Joining in the highly competitive wheeled tractor market was the Nuffield Universal launched by Morris Commercial Motors from its Ward End plant in Birmingham.
This range later to become Leyland stayed around for a number of years, but the sell-off of the tractor division at Bathgate was one of the sorry aspects of the British tractor story.
Turner of Wolverhampton launched its very stylish Yeoman of England tractor featuring the radical V4 diesel engine in 1949.
Smaller machines specifically designed for horticulture were numerous, with some of the most well-known being the BMB Presidents built at the old Vulcan lorry factory at Crossens near Southport.Oak Tree Appliances’ OTA tractor later becoming the Singer Monarch came from Coventry and Birmingham respectively.
Ransome built their range of MG crawlers at Ipswich.
There were Kendall and later Newman tractors from Grantham, and Walthamstow’s Byron tractor.
Others of note included the Rollo Croftmaster which had production facilities at Bonnybridge, Easdale, Inverasdale and Wick, the Trusty and Garner from London.
Even engine and farm machinery manufacturer Lister of Dursley joined the fray with the little-known Goldstar in 1958.
However, the fate of these small-scale producers was sealed in many cases by the wee grey Fergie, which could be adapted to almost every type of farming operation.
The Ferguson, produced in huge numbers at the Banner Lane factory in Coventry, like the later Massey Ferguson tractors, was a game changer and made a huge impact on the vitally important export market and helped put our economy back on track during the 1950s and ’60s.
Changed days!