THIS weekend, a steam plough which 175 years ago turned its inventor into a “worldwide celebrity” will be in action at one of the region’s biggest steam fairs.
Also present at the Hunton Steam Gathering in Lower Wensleydale will be traction engines that bear the inventor’s name – “John Fowler”, they say on their famous front roundel – although nearly all of them were made after his tragically young death.
Fowler was born in Melksham in Wiltshire into a leading family of Quakers. His father, a wealthy merchant, pushed him into the corn trade but when he reached 21, he decided that he wanted to be an engineer so, through the Quaker network, in 1847, he arrived in Middlesbrough to start work with Gilkes, Wilson, Hopkins and Company.
This company specialised in the manufacture of steam locomotives and colliery winding gear, and was hugely important in early Middlesbrough – its three founders were among the first 13 mayors of the town.
Through the company, Fowler came into contact with Joseph Pease, the Quaker founder of Middlesbrough who lived in Darlington’s most opulent mansion – Southend, which is now Duncan Bannatyne’s hotel.
Joseph had 12 children, and young Fowler took a shine to the ninth, Elizabeth Lucy.
But before marriage, he felt he had to establish himself.
In 1849, his Middlesbrough employers sent him to work in Ireland. It was the time of the great potato famine and he was shocked by the poverty and distress that he encountered.
Driven by his Quaker beliefs, he decided to use his engineering talents and his private money to invent something that would improve the lot of the rural peasant. He left the Middlesbrough company and went into partnership in Bristol with Albert Fry, another Quaker who was a member of the famous chocolate family.
Their horse-drawn drainage plough was exhibited at the 1851 Great Exhibition, won national awards and helped the Irish peasants drain their peat bogs.
Fowler felt his concept could be applied to ploughing fields but, frustratingly, no one in the south of England shared his vision. He approached Joseph Pease for advice. Pease put him in touch with Robert Stephenson, and at Stephenson's factory on the banks of the Tyne, various ideas were turned into metal objects.
Fowler was chasing the ultimate accolade: the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) was offering a £500 prize (worth about £45,000 today) for the first person to invent a mechanical device that could be mathematically proven to plough a field more efficiently than horsepower.
For millennia, man had trudged up and down the field behind a beast of burden – be it an ox, a yak or a horse – which was pulling the plough. But, when Fowler replaced the beast of burden with a steam engine on great wheels, it was so heavy, that it often sank into the soil.
As will be demonstrated at the Hunton Steam Gathering, Fowler came up with a brainwave that changed all that. He placed two heavy steam engines parallel to each other on either side of a field, and connected them by drums and winding cables. In the middle of the cable was a "balance plough" which the engines pulled back and forth across a field. When the plough reached the edge of the field, it tipped back on itself and began its return journey across the soil in the other direction.
In 1856, Fowler announced that his machine could plough an acre an hour, but the RASE mathematicians reckoned his primitive equipment was, on average, 2½d-an-acre more expensive than horses.
Still, Fowler felt he had made enough of a mark on the world to return to Darlington and take the hand of Elizabeth Lucy Pease. The marriage was conducted in the Friends Meeting House in Skinnergate on July 30, 1857.
The following year, he tweaked his steam plough ready for another tilt at the RASE title. There was great competition, and a series of showdowns was staged across the country between Fowler and his nearest rivals, the Howard brothers of Bedford.
One heat was held in Newcastle, which attracted farmers from all over Durham and Northumberland.
This plough-off was terrifically exciting: a flywheel flew off one of Fowler's engines but fortunately did not kill anyone; the Howards' engine became red-hot and people were speculating how close it was to meltdown when the plough struck a rock and knocked the ploughman unconscious.
A contemporary report said: "The judges had to stop the contest because the huge, excited crowd had invaded the working area and there was grave risk of serious accident."
Fowler was crowned the winner and picked up RASE's £500. It "acquired for him a world-wide celebrity", said the Darlington Telegraph. His steam ploughs were exported to most European countries – in Egypt, they used them on cotton plantations – and even though they were very expensive at more than £1,000-a-set, farmers and contractors clubbed together to buy them.
Fowler set himself up in business in Leeds building steam ploughs and traction engines, and soon was employing 400 people who were bringing his 32 patents to live.
But all this inventing began to affect his mental health. "His brain and nervous system were wrought into a state of undue activity, and his medical team advised much outdoor exercise as the best cure," said the Darlington Telegraph.
His doctor prescribed physical activity to overcome the stress, so Fowler and Elizabeth and their five children moved to Ackworth, about 12 miles to the south of his works in Leeds. He rode energetically into work every day.
But it was not enough. He was still afflicted by stress. His doctors prescribed even more physical exercise. So, on their advice, he took up hunting, and whenever he was not inventing, he was out riding across the fields to hounds.
In November 1864, disaster struck. While chasing a scent, Fowler fell from his horse and fractured his arm.
Tetanus set in and he died on December 3, 1864. He was only 38, and left Elizabeth with five young children.
His funeral was held at the Friends Meeting House in Darlington, where one of the speakers pointed out that neither genius nor accomplishment could make a man more than mortal. He was buried in the graveyard behind.
The Peases felt his loss keenly and commissioned an imposing granite memorial. It was topped with a brass model of the steam plough, and its sides just said: “John Fowler CE 1856”.
It was placed in the grounds of the Pierremont mansion, off Woodland Road, which belonged to Elizabeth’s uncle, Henry Pease. In the 1870s, Henry’s lavish pleasure gardens were open to the public and drew thousands of visitors from across the region.
But when Henry died in 1881, the gardens closed, and the granite block, with the plough on top, was taken to Darlington’s South Park.
In the late 1970s, the brass model disappeared from its top. In 2004, when the park lake was drained, it was hoped that the model would be discovered in the mud, but it wasn’t, and so now it is assumed that it was carted off by metal thieves.
However, Fowler’s three brothers continued his factory in Leeds which made ploughing machines until 1935. They were superseded by the development of the internal combustion engine which meant lighter engines could work on the field.
The brothers moved John Fowler & Co into building steam traction engines and today more than 700 of them have been preserved across the country, meaning that there is always a very good chance of spotting them at a gathering like Hunton’s this weekend.
- The 37th Hutton Steam Gathering is held on Saturday and Sunday at the midpoint between Bedale, Leyburn and Catterick – try DL8 1QF in a satnav. Admission is £10 for adults and £5 for children, and last year’s gathering donated £9,000 to local charities. There were be hundreds of exhibits from the last 100 years of agricultural machinery and motoring, and there is a craft and food market, plus there will be displays of birds of prey, mountain dogs and Fowler’s Steam Plough.
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