Marshall Steam Threshing

A waggoner and his horses and spindle-sided waggon loaded with sacks of corn, waits to pull out of a farmyard in Lincolnshire in the early 1900's. A Marshall threshing drum is separating grain from straw and chaff. Two men are pitching sheaves to a "band cutter" and "feeder" standing on top of the machine. Emerging grain is fed into sacks, weighed, raised on a winding barrow and loaded onto the waggon. Straw is carried upwards at the rear of the threshing machine to men building a stack, which when complete will be thatched to keep out the rain.

The "straw jack" and threshing machine are driven by a 6hp single cylinder general purpose traction engine manufactured by William Marshall Sons & Co. of Gainsborough in 1894. The Brittania Iron Works was founded in 1848 by millright Henry Marshall and after his death in 1861 was managed by his two sons James & Henry. The company's products became well known all over the world and included portable and stationary steam engines, traction engines, boilers, threshing machines, agricultural and tea making machinery and famously, "Field Marshall" diesel powered tractors.

The engine was supplied to Tom Stamp of Linwood, Market Rasen, Lincs. who owned 14 traction engines, used for threshing, ploughing and cultivating. The story goes that when the new 6hp Marshall engine arrived, standing alongside the large ploughing engines, someone commented that it looked like a teapot! The name stuck and the engine still bears the name "Teapot" on a brass plate.