A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 



exhibited, at the first meeting of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society of England, in 1839, the 

 first iron-wheel plough of the kind ever shown 

 in England, which became the prototype of the 

 present form of English iron ploughs. The 

 first volume of the Journal of the Royal Agri- 

 cultural Society contains the following report of 

 the judges : — 



A Plough by Mr. John Howard, of Bedford, of 

 small size, with a mould-board or furrow-turner of 

 excellent form, calculated to give the least resistance 

 in turning over the furrow, much approved. 



Soon afterwards, Mr. Philip Pusey, the well- 

 known landowner and agriculturist, designated 

 Mr. Howard's plough ' The Champion Plough 

 of England,' by which designation it has ever 

 since been known. Two years later, in 1841, 

 Mr. Howard's son James exhibited a plough, of 

 which the following interesting mention is made 

 in the Society's Journal for that year : — 



A Bedfordshire lad, not yet 20 years of age, brought 

 an iron plough constructed at his father's Works from 

 his own design, and which was an object of much 

 curiosity. Finding no one to whom he was inclined 

 to entrust the Implement, he took off his coat, 

 guided it himself, and secured one of the eleven 

 prizes awarded. 



The Britannia Iron Works were begun in 

 1857 and completed in 1859. The spacious 

 and symmetrical buildings, with their massive 

 walls and handsome Italian entrance gates, still 

 testify to the liberal and sanguine ideas of the 

 founder. The total area occupied by the works 

 is 20 acres ; the workshops, as well as the 

 offices, are entirely on the ground floor. The 

 site has the advantage of having both the Mid- 

 land and the North Western Railways passing 

 close by it. 



The general character of the output may be 

 gathered from the stocks stored in the quadrangle 

 and other areas. Many kinds of plough, from 

 the ' Champion ' to light little ploughs workable 

 by a pony on an allotment ; digging ploughs ; 

 strong Cape ploughs ; Kentish ploughs with long 

 narrow mould-boards ; Anglo-American ploughs, 

 in wood and iron ; toy-like ploughs for India ; 

 ploughs with heavy bent-wood beams — as spoken 

 of by Virgil — still in use in Bulgaria and the 

 south of Russia ; iron and wood turnwrest or 

 one-way ploughs for South America, Spain, and 

 Turkey ; double gang, triple, quadruple ploughs, 

 and ploughs for turningsix furrows — all these may 

 be seen either finished or stacked in parts. 



The works themselves are admirably arranged, 

 in the usual departments. The foundry is 

 a rectangular building 250 ft. long, covering 

 about an acre. Then there are the pattern 

 room ; the grinding and polishing shops ; the 

 boiler-making shop, where the Howard Light 

 Railway and rolling stock is produced to supply 



both home and foreign demand ; the fitting shop, 

 the forges, the wood department, the painting 

 department, which opens into the forwarding 

 department. One of the specialties of the Messrs. 

 Howard is the chilling of ploughshares and other 

 articles by jets of cold water spurted up against 

 the underside of the metal-mould when the 

 mother metal is poured in, a process invented 

 and patented by the Messrs. Howard. The 

 earliest patent for this process was granted to the 

 Messrs, Howard in 1852, a quarter of a century 

 before the process was adopted in the United 

 States. Recently the firm have added general 

 engineering to their original agricultural imple- 

 ment industry. 



The modern practice of locating large en- 

 gineering and other works in the country instead 

 of crowding them together in London and other 

 large centres of population, has brought several 

 such works to Bedford and Luton. The 

 largest of these, and therefore that which may 

 be selected for special notice as a sample of the 

 rest, is the Queen's Engineering Works, Bedford 

 (W. H. Allen, Son, and Company, Limited). 

 These works were originally established in 

 Lambeth in 1880, but the site was purchased 

 by the London and South-Western Railway 

 Company, and the firm consequently removed 

 to Bedford in 1894. The present works are 

 contiguous to the Midland Railway Company's 

 line. The buildings, which have been several 

 times enlarged, occupy about four acres out of an 

 area of ten acres. They are equipped with the 

 highest character of plant arranged for the manu- 

 facture of very high-grade machinery, comprising 

 auxiliary machinery for the Admiralty, including 

 dynamo electric machinery, as well as centri- 

 fugal pumping engines (hundreds of which have 

 been fitted to ships in the British and other 

 Navies), air-pumping machinery, fan engines, 

 electric gear for the mercantile marine, and 

 machinery for large central stations, comprising 

 engines and dynamos, motors, condensing plants, 

 and Edwards's air-pumps. The motive power 

 used is electricity generated in the works, and 

 latterly — in consequence of extensions — supple- 

 mented by an electric supply from the electric 

 works of the Bedford Corporation. All the 

 departments — boiler-house, power-house, testing 

 bay, erecting shop, heavy and medium machine 

 shops, automatic and semi-automatic machine 

 department, electrical and dynamo manufacturing 

 department, iron and brass foundries, pattern 

 shop, &c., &c. — are spacious and admirably 

 arranged. The firm employ about 900 men ; 

 and the erection of the works gave rise to the 

 development of a new suburb of the town. At 

 the entrance a handsome suite of buildings con- 

 tains the business offices and the extensive 

 drawing and designing offices. A number of 

 pupils are constantly in training under the 

 personal superintendence of the head of the 

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