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The Pioneers
After the Napoleonic war England went through a long period of depression. The tide
turned around 1850 and the next three decades were known as 'The Golden Age of British
Farming'.
In 1856 Fowler took his first mechanised steam cultivation tackle to Essex and the
Chelmsford show, July of that year. The idea was liked and from 1856 to 1858 some
intense development work took place leading to the coverted £500 prize for steam
ploughing at the Royal Show at Chester. For the next four years technical and commercial
development went ahead rapidly.
When Benjamin Bomford adopted steam cultivation in 1864 or thereabouts he used a
somewhat unorthodx Savory engines of 12hp made in Glocestershire that he purchased
as his first steam set. A special report in 1867 noted on Benjamin Bomford's farms
undertaking in a lot of hedge grubbing, leading to tillage operations on his own
farm as well as his neighbours. Benjamin owned at this time two sets of steam tillage
machinery but a third was being considered. The reason for this, was the idea to
begin to move into a business based on working for his neighbours, the beginnings
of a contracting business.
By 1880 Benjamin had five sets of Fowler engine machines working for him giving
him a reputation for good farming leading to visitors from Egypt, Italy and France
coming to see his methods of steam cultivation.
By 1904 the Bomford company had gone throgh a number of changes moving away from
corn production due to a slump in prices. A local company called Humphries and Co,
engineering landscoops and scarifiers then went into liquidation. Leading Bomford
& Evershead to take it over which was formed for a purpose, to join an engineering
company and farming outfit all under one roof. With the formation of the new company
an entirely new basis for Bomford engineering developments were bought into being.
Development of the company continued with the development of a repair shop at teh
Salford Priors Site in May 1910. The Bomford Brothers from 1920 to 1939 developed
hoe equiptment, pulled by tractor and hand driven. As well as other projects such
as potato planters and a pneumatic system for raising both ends of a plough. In
the war years land clearance devices were developed to aid with the war effort such
as Tree Pushers, extensively used in land clearance work, a Harvest thresher, developed
under the Bomford-McConnel arrangement.
After the war years the company then developed into the vegatation control systems
that you see today with machines such as the first side arms mowers, rotary angle
mowers and then more recently in the 1980's machines such as the superflow, turbotiller,
snowploughs, Flexitine and Bushwhacker.
The Quality of these machines in engineering terms can still be seen today as superflow
and bushwacher spares are still purchasable as spare parts today. The engineering
excellence and build quality set by these designs have been the benchmark for development
through the ages and are replicated in the machines produced by Bomford today. |
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