OLD WOODEN PLOUGHS

Hawera Star, Volume L, 24 October 1930, Page 2

OLD WOODEN PLOUGHS

STILL IX USE TN ENGLAND. A wooden plough ol' a pattern 130 years old was exhibited in the implement «ection ol’ a recent Sufiolk county show at Framlingham. It is still profitable to make and show this plough, for large numbers of the ploughmen of Suffolk and North Essex will use no other. Their policy of the plough begins and ends with the original two-liorse .swing plough, with its long wooden handles, which Mr. William Bentall, a farmer, of Goldhanger, Essex, invented about 1800', and called after the name of his village. Mr. Bentall wanted a plough with which he could cope with the heavy, sticky land of his county. Some of his neighbours saw and coveted his plough, and in 1805 he gave up his farm and built a small works at Heybridge, near Mai don, Essex, for plough-mak-ing. To-day, in the fourth generation, the Bentalls are making modern agricultural machinery • of all types for home and overseas, hut also the old Goldhanger wooden plough, for these eastern county peasants say quite frankly that the plough their grandfathers used is their plough, and they never want better.