A Unique, Unusual and Fascinating Farm Gate

Travelling along the quiet country lanesof England, away from the hustle and bustle of the over-crowded motorways, one cannot help but notice the vast array of different gate designs at the entrances to fields, large stately homes, small cottage gardens and residential driveways; but it would be extremely difficult indeed to discover a more unusual, and probably unique, pair of gates such as those in the quiet, rural Northamptonshire village of Boughton.   

 Made entirely of hand-held agricultural implements, and in as good a condition as the day they left the Globe Works in Northampton, they are a superb, full-sized collection of billhooks, a shepherd’s crook, two pitchforks, a rake, a ditching tool, spade, a flail, one scythe and a hatchet – all of which were commonly used by farm labourers and woodsman throughout the 19th  and 20th centuries in England .  

Variations of these implement designs are still in regular use to this day all over the world.

 The large and heavy gates were forged and, as they are unique, put together by hand at the canal-side Globe Works, by the firm of William Allchin which was founded in 1847 and traded as brass founders. 

 In 1860 the firm began production of portable engines.  Although it was not fully appreciated at the time, these radical one-man-operated machines would completely transform the image and functionality of the average British farm, with the result that many farm labourers would be thrown out of work.

 As the technology of the day improved, the famous Allchin Traction Engine (of which there are a number surviving in preservation around the world) followed in the wake of the popular portable, but static engine.

 It is widely believed that the gates were made sometime around the end of the nineteenth or early twentieth century, and that they may well have been used by the firm as a form of physical ‘catalogue’ of their agricultural implement products in the days prior to the production of steam vehicles.

 Eventually, with the introduction and widespread use of the tractor, production of traction engines came to an end all over Britain.  Allchin’s ceased trading and went into liquidation in 1931.  Nothing now remains of the old traction engine works, the area now covered with modern apartments.