Birmingham was never considered to be at the heart of agricultural engineering but as ever the city is full of surprises playing host to some well known garden machinary manufacturers as well as Nuffield Tractors.

In medieval times Birmingham had a prolific blade industry, producing blades and cutting instruments for agriculture, later these industries branched into cutlery and swords with agricultural implement production seemingly dying out as the town rapidly became industrialized.

There were several manufacturers of agricultural machinary in Birmingham.

 Atco, who produced mowers at their Hall Green Factory. Clifford Cultivators, who produced cultivators also at Hall Green and The Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company, later becoming Wolseley Engineering (Now The Plumb Centre) at Electric Avenue, Witton who also produced a very successful small American cultivator under licence called, The Merry Tiller. You might guess by the name of the company that they also had some other very interesting agricultural products from electric fencing to sheep shearing equipment. They were also involved in the formation of  the Wolseley Car Company. Webb were well known for girder motorcycle forks and later for a range of push and powered mowers latterly being taken over by Wolseley. All four of these companies were renowned for the very high quality agricultural and horticultural machines they made. Many example of these machines continue in service today and are also highly sought after as working collectibles. Nuffield Tractors were built at the Morris Works which is now LDV Vans at Washwood Heath.

There were several well known sprayer manufacturers in  Birmingham.

Mysto   Spraygen   Allen & Freeman   Four Oaks

Bristol Street Motors, in Bristol Street Birmingham 5, were main agents for Fordson tractors in the fifties.

Please contact us if you can add any information to the above. We also want to hear from anyone who worked in this industry in any respect.

jp may 12 2007