Saturday 27 August 2011
No 101 Little engines.
be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
BAMFORD TULIP GAS STATIONARY ENGINE. 1933 2.5 H.P.
Little engines were a feature of my early days. They were to be found in many situations and on many small farms, indeed on bigger ones too for many various purposes. Prime one was driving the small threshing mills which most crofters had. Where water was available many farms, big or small, had a dam and water wheel for powering threshing mills. But often water was not available so the two-horse mill course was used. More horses for larger mills on larger farms.
As time went on steam engines developed but again only larger farms could afford them. The best horse course I remember was the octagonal stone built roofed mill course at Rattar Mains. Later a chimney stack was added in one corner for a steam engine. Both are now long demolished. Many Caithness farms had high chimney stacks for a steam engine, few now if any are left. Perhaps Ackergill.
There was a steam engine at the Bu of Rousam in Stronsay with my grandfather David, fed by coal shipped in from Newcastle.
Wm Tait’s Diary records :-
“1896. Aug 08 sat 4 plows in Brecks a.m. - 3 carts at pier for coal p.m.
Got home 8 tons coal, 8½ tons in Engine house at this date. 8 cwt in coal house.”
So the steam engine got 8 tons, the farm house had 8 cwts.
Even a windmill was used on some farms but these were very rare and had to be free standing from the other buildings as the windmill had to rotate to catch the wind. Just like a Wind Turbine now. I think meal mills would have been the only reasonable users of windmills, as in Holland, through if a thrashing mill could have been worked it would have needed to have a sheaf loft to be first filled with sheaves before thrashing commenced. Or a windmill driving a water pump for the flagstone quarries at Castlehill, one now unused stone built tower is to be still seen there.
There was a multi-bladed windmill at the Ayre of the Myers which pumped water from almost sea level at the marshy Ayre o’ the Mires to the Reservoir situated half a mile up the road to Whitehall. It was one of the ones so beloved of photos of the Australian outback, pumping water at isolated sheep stations for livestock drinking troughs, and no doubt the houses as well.
Our father took care of the Windmill and the Reservoir which fed the Water Supply System for Whitehall Village. That Ayre o’ the Mires windmill had to be started and stopped as required, which task our father took care of himself, or more often had someone from the Village half a mile away do so for him on a regular basis. The water was pumped uphill to the red corrugated iron covered Reservoir where it went through first a large settling tank, then spilled over into a second settling tank filled with a bottom layer of gravel and sand off the beach. That was all the purification it got, a filtering system using what nature provided, no chemicals at all.
It was much used and kept the Village and the herring drifters in season and the Harbour supplied with water. I remember it being cleaned out once and the deep layer of muddy gravel and beach sand being replaced with a clean layer in the second tank, and a layer of fine mud being taken out of the first settling tank. Hard work for men with shovels, buckets on a rope and carts at the door. The system worked well though, simple if it does look now.
There was one little engine I remember half way to the Village at the Water Reservoir. It was our house water supply engine. I cannot recall what make it was, but Lister springs to mind. Smell of oil and and the petrol which was kept in a red metal two gallon can of which there are still a few around. Davie Chalmers in the Village supplied the petrol and oil. Generally father started the engine on his way to the Village, stopping it on his way home. Or put just enough petrol into it if he was to be in the Village for a long time so it stopped of its own accord when the fuel ran out, self regulating. Starting was by turning a handle and sometimes much hard turning before it fired and all was well, chugging away until the measure of petrol ran out, a self timing device.
The only other control was the overflow pipe from the header tank in the house which told father that the tank was full and he would go down to the Reservoir and stop the engine.
Small engines were fascinating apart from driving the threshing mills of crofts.
For farm thrashing mills Stronsay was not too well blessed with suitable water to fill a mill dam so the old horse mill course was used. Then small engines appeared. I do not know when but they generally replaced horses for thrashing the crop, possibly about 1900 or so. I can hear them still, the slow thump thump thump of these small engines echoing. Some of them are still around, beautifully polished and lovingly kept and in working condition at the Vintage Machinery Club Shows at John O’Groats. Or at the County Show.
There is one to be seen in a corner at Mary Anne’s Cottage in Dunnet, used for driving the Crofter’s Mill and the 4 inch bruiser when needed. Still turns sweetly enough but the fuel tank has been removed so no need to fear for safety if someone started it!! Not much space for it but enough.
It is a Bamford Tulip Top Gas Stationary Engine. 1933 2.5 H.P. which ran on petrol. I got a wonderful photo of one from Princeton University in the U.S.A. I also turned one up on the Internet by entering the name above and, with earphones on, I watched it turning away with the old familiar sound of hitting and missing in my ears. Quite magical and almost emotional.
It was called “ a hit and a miss” engine because the speed was governed by a mechanical governor that pushed in a spring-loaded valve now and again when the engine ran a bit faster. That killed compression so the engine gave a miss and thus kept to a constant speed. It ran on petrol with no sparking plug or magneto and fired on compression, as do diesel engines today.
The final one I remember with affection was a Lister engine at Greenland Mains. It sat in the grain loft above a hatch below which was a horizontal shaft with 4 sheep shearing units, driving with a belt through the wooden floor. There I learned my sheepshearing with a 3 inch hand-piece. The engine was about 5 h.p., water cooled from a header tank, single cylinder, ran well. Where it is now I know not.
These small engines were remarkably good, and, on asking someone in Castletown old enough to remember the Bamford Tulup Top, he said he had never seen one taken apart as they just kept on working!!!
BAMFORD TULIP GAS STATIONARY ENGINE. 1933 2.5 H.P.
Little engines were a feature of my early days. They were to be found in many situations and on many small farms, indeed on bigger ones too for many various purposes. Prime one was driving the small threshing mills which most crofters had. Where water was available many farms, big or small, had a dam and water wheel for powering threshing mills. But often water was not available so the two-horse mill course was used. More horses for larger mills on larger farms.
As time went on steam engines developed but again only larger farms could afford them. The best horse course I remember was the octagonal stone built roofed mill course at Rattar Mains. Later a chimney stack was added in one corner for a steam engine. Both are now long demolished. Many Caithness farms had high chimney stacks for a steam engine, few now if any are left. Perhaps Ackergill.
There was a steam engine at the Bu of Rousam in Stronsay with my grandfather David, fed by coal shipped in from Newcastle.
Wm Tait’s Diary records :-
“1896. Aug 08 sat 4 plows in Brecks a.m. - 3 carts at pier for coal p.m.
Got home 8 tons coal, 8½ tons in Engine house at this date. 8 cwt in coal house.”
So the steam engine got 8 tons, the farm house had 8 cwts.
Even a windmill was used on some farms but these were very rare and had to be free standing from the other buildings as the windmill had to rotate to catch the wind. Just like a Wind Turbine now. I think meal mills would have been the only reasonable users of windmills, as in Holland, through if a thrashing mill could have been worked it would have needed to have a sheaf loft to be first filled with sheaves before thrashing commenced. Or a windmill driving a water pump for the flagstone quarries at Castlehill, one now unused stone built tower is to be still seen there.
There was a multi-bladed windmill at the Ayre of the Myers which pumped water from almost sea level at the marshy Ayre o’ the Mires to the Reservoir situated half a mile up the road to Whitehall. It was one of the ones so beloved of photos of the Australian outback, pumping water at isolated sheep stations for livestock drinking troughs, and no doubt the houses as well.
Our father took care of the Windmill and the Reservoir which fed the Water Supply System for Whitehall Village. That Ayre o’ the Mires windmill had to be started and stopped as required, which task our father took care of himself, or more often had someone from the Village half a mile away do so for him on a regular basis. The water was pumped uphill to the red corrugated iron covered Reservoir where it went through first a large settling tank, then spilled over into a second settling tank filled with a bottom layer of gravel and sand off the beach. That was all the purification it got, a filtering system using what nature provided, no chemicals at all.
It was much used and kept the Village and the herring drifters in season and the Harbour supplied with water. I remember it being cleaned out once and the deep layer of muddy gravel and beach sand being replaced with a clean layer in the second tank, and a layer of fine mud being taken out of the first settling tank. Hard work for men with shovels, buckets on a rope and carts at the door. The system worked well though, simple if it does look now.
There was one little engine I remember half way to the Village at the Water Reservoir. It was our house water supply engine. I cannot recall what make it was, but Lister springs to mind. Smell of oil and and the petrol which was kept in a red metal two gallon can of which there are still a few around. Davie Chalmers in the Village supplied the petrol and oil. Generally father started the engine on his way to the Village, stopping it on his way home. Or put just enough petrol into it if he was to be in the Village for a long time so it stopped of its own accord when the fuel ran out, self regulating. Starting was by turning a handle and sometimes much hard turning before it fired and all was well, chugging away until the measure of petrol ran out, a self timing device.
The only other control was the overflow pipe from the header tank in the house which told father that the tank was full and he would go down to the Reservoir and stop the engine.
Small engines were fascinating apart from driving the threshing mills of crofts.
For farm thrashing mills Stronsay was not too well blessed with suitable water to fill a mill dam so the old horse mill course was used. Then small engines appeared. I do not know when but they generally replaced horses for thrashing the crop, possibly about 1900 or so. I can hear them still, the slow thump thump thump of these small engines echoing. Some of them are still around, beautifully polished and lovingly kept and in working condition at the Vintage Machinery Club Shows at John O’Groats. Or at the County Show.
There is one to be seen in a corner at Mary Anne’s Cottage in Dunnet, used for driving the Crofter’s Mill and the 4 inch bruiser when needed. Still turns sweetly enough but the fuel tank has been removed so no need to fear for safety if someone started it!! Not much space for it but enough.
It is a Bamford Tulip Top Gas Stationary Engine. 1933 2.5 H.P. which ran on petrol. I got a wonderful photo of one from Princeton University in the U.S.A. I also turned one up on the Internet by entering the name above and, with earphones on, I watched it turning away with the old familiar sound of hitting and missing in my ears. Quite magical and almost emotional.
It was called “ a hit and a miss” engine because the speed was governed by a mechanical governor that pushed in a spring-loaded valve now and again when the engine ran a bit faster. That killed compression so the engine gave a miss and thus kept to a constant speed. It ran on petrol with no sparking plug or magneto and fired on compression, as do diesel engines today.
The final one I remember with affection was a Lister engine at Greenland Mains. It sat in the grain loft above a hatch below which was a horizontal shaft with 4 sheep shearing units, driving with a belt through the wooden floor. There I learned my sheepshearing with a 3 inch hand-piece. The engine was about 5 h.p., water cooled from a header tank, single cylinder, ran well. Where it is now I know not.
These small engines were remarkably good, and, on asking someone in Castletown old enough to remember the Bamford Tulup Top, he said he had never seen one taken apart as they just kept on working!!!
Thursday 18 August 2011
No 99. Little Mills.
No 99. Little Mills.
The Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s Cottage, Dunnet.
Made by T.S.Allan, Cowgate, Thurso,
I have dwelt enough on flails, on small hand mills and the large high-speed drum mills I knew and worked with, but I must not overlook the Crofters Mill. The crofts of Rousam in Stronsay were peppered with them in my younger days, and most of the smaller farms too. There were so many of them at one time including Caithness but few are now left.
There is a Crofters Mill in Mary Anne’s Cottage in Dunnet, still erroneously described there as a hand mill in spite of my well-meant advice over many years that it is not. They say it was built in Orkney and came from there. Not so. The Mill may indeed have come ultimately from Orkney to Mary Annes, but it is a Crofter’s Mill built by T.S.Allan, Millwright, THURSO. His firms name is stenciled in black letters on the side. His long gone workshop was in the Coogate in Thurso next door to a blacksmith called Gunn.
Regrettably, the Coogate, that historic old Viking name for the street where old Thurso’s milking cows were kept, was changed long since to Riverside Place by the Atomics on the old Thurso Town Council, the Coogate being thought not quite proper enough for New Age Thursonians. Perhaps, but it is still good enough for not so snooty Edinburgh.
The milking cows kept in the Coogate were grazed on the Commons of Thurso above Ormlie, or any other grass available, and fed in winter on bought in or cadged hay. Just a reminder that towns not so long ago had milking cows
within their boundaries, and horses and stables too big time, both of which had dung middens needing to be cleared away and carted out of town to nearby farms.
Wm Tait, working a few miles outside of Kirkwall with his brother-in-law Robert Lennie at Work Farm, not too far to cart feed in and dung out, recorded in his Diaries:-
“1889.
feb 19 tues 4 carts a run to Town (Kirkwall) with oats 16 qrs - took out dung from J. & W. Tait a.m.
feb 20 wed 1 cart at Town with last of oats to Cumming - took out dung.
And in 1893, 23rd Jan, 6th Feb, 8th Feb, there were entries to taking out polise!!! manure (dung) from Kirkwall. “
Probably dung middens from their horses, and probably a milking cow or two.
So too with Thurso, and the late Dr Fell’s garage next to the Coogate could previously have been the Doctor’s stable for his horse and gig, now appropriately replaced by Dunnet’s Garage Showrooms.
T.S. Allan’s Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s Cottage has two straw walkers each a mere 8 inches wide, an overall width for the Mill of 20 inches allowing for side clearance. The 24” diameter open drum has high grade steel pegs mounted in strong wooden crossbar beaters.
The concave is solid and would have kept the straw inside it for maximum separation of grain before being thrown out onto the slatted straw walkers. There the grain fell through and the straw carried on over the end of the Mill. The rest of the Mill is a mere enlargement or copy of the fanners used so long ago for cleaning grain from chaff and small bits of straw. Grain fell onto a shaking or oscillating shoe with a few perforated trays to allow grain to fall gently into a draft of air from the fan, which draft swept through it and separated the grain from the chaff. The chaff was blown into a closed-off compartment at the back of the Mill under the drum, keeping it from blowing all over. The chaff being blown in that direction was a reversal of the usual direction we all knew with our thrashing mills, being the only time I have seen it so. With a small Crofters Mill in a small building that was an advantage, having the benefit of keeping straw and chaff separate in a confined space.
The chaff door of course could be opened when needed for chaff for feeding the cows or filling a chaff bed!! It brought home to me that nothing was wasted on a croft, the chaff we put so cavalierly under the cattle in the courts for bedding was a much valued feed for a crofter. I have seen a byre on a Croft bedded down for the night with just one small pail of chaff, it worked well enough as the cattle immediately lay down. No straw wasted on bedding on a Croft!!
Good grain came out of one small chute in the side of the mill into a box. In Mary Anne’s it is a bushel measure, unstamped but regulation size all the same, sitting in situ on the floor. The tails or light grains would have been delivered from a second chute into another box, or perhaps just allowed to accumulate in a small heap.
A similar Mill is balanced precariously on top of an indoor wall at Andrew Mackay’s West Greenland Farm in his spacious implement shed. I was told it was hand made in Dunbeath by an Archie Sinclair, grand-father of the present Archie Sinclair, and I presume he bought the pulleys and shafts ready made and his part would have been in assembling the bits and pieces on his own well made wooden frame. It is still in working order, but not needed now as Andrew has bought a big combine.
With Crofts there were not too many people to help, so the continuous thrashing we did on bigger farms could not be done. The sheaves would have been carted in from the stack prior to thrashing and at Mary Anne’s would have been pitched in at the high sheaf window and stored behind the Mill on the floor ready for subsequent thrashing. Then the horse, or preferably two horses if you had them, would be hitched to the horse mill course outside the barn wall and all would be ready. Even these small mills needed a good bit of power so many neighbours shared, each helping the other with a horse to make up the pair needed. They might do the same for ploughing as keeping two working horses on a small croft was neither easy nor very affordable.
A very good example of the iron harness work of a horse mill course can be seen outside the barn gable end at Laidhay at Dunbeath, well laid out and worth a look in passing if you can spare a moment, as indeed is the whole complex. Large beveled Crown wheel and small beveled sprocket at right angles on a shaft that went in underground through the barn wall to a large toothed wheel to take the drive to the Mill. One of the heavy wooden shaft poles for the horse course is inside the barn hung from the rafters.
In the wall beside the Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s is a small opening window called the “Whoa Hole”. From there the Crofter could call through the open window to his horse or horses and control their movements as he thrashed, “Hup” to go and “Whoa” to stop. Well trained horses answered immediately to such commands. There were not enough people available on a croft to have someone looking after the horses while thrashing. Horses were well trained, and I have used such commands when carting neeps from the field. They would answer the commands to go or stop with these well chosen words, better trained than a tractor, moving on and halting when needed!!!
Mary Anne’s does have many other things to see and is open 2.00 pm to 4.30 pm every day till the end of September. It is well worth a visit with your overseas visitors!! I have met there on occasion, when passing by, people visiting from all over the World, and recently met with a couple from near Pukekohe in New Zealand who shopped at the same superstore there as our daughter Janet. And they were farmers too!! It is indeed a small World.
The Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s Cottage, Dunnet.
Made by T.S.Allan, Cowgate, Thurso,
I have dwelt enough on flails, on small hand mills and the large high-speed drum mills I knew and worked with, but I must not overlook the Crofters Mill. The crofts of Rousam in Stronsay were peppered with them in my younger days, and most of the smaller farms too. There were so many of them at one time including Caithness but few are now left.
There is a Crofters Mill in Mary Anne’s Cottage in Dunnet, still erroneously described there as a hand mill in spite of my well-meant advice over many years that it is not. They say it was built in Orkney and came from there. Not so. The Mill may indeed have come ultimately from Orkney to Mary Annes, but it is a Crofter’s Mill built by T.S.Allan, Millwright, THURSO. His firms name is stenciled in black letters on the side. His long gone workshop was in the Coogate in Thurso next door to a blacksmith called Gunn.
Regrettably, the Coogate, that historic old Viking name for the street where old Thurso’s milking cows were kept, was changed long since to Riverside Place by the Atomics on the old Thurso Town Council, the Coogate being thought not quite proper enough for New Age Thursonians. Perhaps, but it is still good enough for not so snooty Edinburgh.
The milking cows kept in the Coogate were grazed on the Commons of Thurso above Ormlie, or any other grass available, and fed in winter on bought in or cadged hay. Just a reminder that towns not so long ago had milking cows
within their boundaries, and horses and stables too big time, both of which had dung middens needing to be cleared away and carted out of town to nearby farms.
Wm Tait, working a few miles outside of Kirkwall with his brother-in-law Robert Lennie at Work Farm, not too far to cart feed in and dung out, recorded in his Diaries:-
“1889.
feb 19 tues 4 carts a run to Town (Kirkwall) with oats 16 qrs - took out dung from J. & W. Tait a.m.
feb 20 wed 1 cart at Town with last of oats to Cumming - took out dung.
And in 1893, 23rd Jan, 6th Feb, 8th Feb, there were entries to taking out polise!!! manure (dung) from Kirkwall. “
Probably dung middens from their horses, and probably a milking cow or two.
So too with Thurso, and the late Dr Fell’s garage next to the Coogate could previously have been the Doctor’s stable for his horse and gig, now appropriately replaced by Dunnet’s Garage Showrooms.
T.S. Allan’s Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s Cottage has two straw walkers each a mere 8 inches wide, an overall width for the Mill of 20 inches allowing for side clearance. The 24” diameter open drum has high grade steel pegs mounted in strong wooden crossbar beaters.
The concave is solid and would have kept the straw inside it for maximum separation of grain before being thrown out onto the slatted straw walkers. There the grain fell through and the straw carried on over the end of the Mill. The rest of the Mill is a mere enlargement or copy of the fanners used so long ago for cleaning grain from chaff and small bits of straw. Grain fell onto a shaking or oscillating shoe with a few perforated trays to allow grain to fall gently into a draft of air from the fan, which draft swept through it and separated the grain from the chaff. The chaff was blown into a closed-off compartment at the back of the Mill under the drum, keeping it from blowing all over. The chaff being blown in that direction was a reversal of the usual direction we all knew with our thrashing mills, being the only time I have seen it so. With a small Crofters Mill in a small building that was an advantage, having the benefit of keeping straw and chaff separate in a confined space.
The chaff door of course could be opened when needed for chaff for feeding the cows or filling a chaff bed!! It brought home to me that nothing was wasted on a croft, the chaff we put so cavalierly under the cattle in the courts for bedding was a much valued feed for a crofter. I have seen a byre on a Croft bedded down for the night with just one small pail of chaff, it worked well enough as the cattle immediately lay down. No straw wasted on bedding on a Croft!!
Good grain came out of one small chute in the side of the mill into a box. In Mary Anne’s it is a bushel measure, unstamped but regulation size all the same, sitting in situ on the floor. The tails or light grains would have been delivered from a second chute into another box, or perhaps just allowed to accumulate in a small heap.
A similar Mill is balanced precariously on top of an indoor wall at Andrew Mackay’s West Greenland Farm in his spacious implement shed. I was told it was hand made in Dunbeath by an Archie Sinclair, grand-father of the present Archie Sinclair, and I presume he bought the pulleys and shafts ready made and his part would have been in assembling the bits and pieces on his own well made wooden frame. It is still in working order, but not needed now as Andrew has bought a big combine.
With Crofts there were not too many people to help, so the continuous thrashing we did on bigger farms could not be done. The sheaves would have been carted in from the stack prior to thrashing and at Mary Anne’s would have been pitched in at the high sheaf window and stored behind the Mill on the floor ready for subsequent thrashing. Then the horse, or preferably two horses if you had them, would be hitched to the horse mill course outside the barn wall and all would be ready. Even these small mills needed a good bit of power so many neighbours shared, each helping the other with a horse to make up the pair needed. They might do the same for ploughing as keeping two working horses on a small croft was neither easy nor very affordable.
A very good example of the iron harness work of a horse mill course can be seen outside the barn gable end at Laidhay at Dunbeath, well laid out and worth a look in passing if you can spare a moment, as indeed is the whole complex. Large beveled Crown wheel and small beveled sprocket at right angles on a shaft that went in underground through the barn wall to a large toothed wheel to take the drive to the Mill. One of the heavy wooden shaft poles for the horse course is inside the barn hung from the rafters.
In the wall beside the Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s is a small opening window called the “Whoa Hole”. From there the Crofter could call through the open window to his horse or horses and control their movements as he thrashed, “Hup” to go and “Whoa” to stop. Well trained horses answered immediately to such commands. There were not enough people available on a croft to have someone looking after the horses while thrashing. Horses were well trained, and I have used such commands when carting neeps from the field. They would answer the commands to go or stop with these well chosen words, better trained than a tractor, moving on and halting when needed!!!
Mary Anne’s does have many other things to see and is open 2.00 pm to 4.30 pm every day till the end of September. It is well worth a visit with your overseas visitors!! I have met there on occasion, when passing by, people visiting from all over the World, and recently met with a couple from near Pukekohe in New Zealand who shopped at the same superstore there as our daughter Janet. And they were farmers too!! It is indeed a small World.
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