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!!!