After the input to the Cooke design made by Henry
Baldwin of Mendham, the next phase of design and production took place , about
ten miles away in Suffolk. Here it was that the local wheelwrights of the village
of Peasenhall, James and Johnathan Smyth, worked under the patronage of a local
farmer, Robert Wardley of Grove Farm across the road from their wheelwrights
shop, to improve the Lever Drill. It is likely that Wardley and the Smyths came
in contact with Baldwin's drill at Mendham which was their local market.
The brothers carried out repairs to the Norfolk
drills then being used. All the coulters of this drill were set in a transverse
beam and could not be moved independently of one another. James Smyth and his
brother Jonathan produced their first lever drill which followed Baldwin's pattern
in which each coulter was fixed to an independent lever for its ready adjustment
to different widths; it also embodied the gear drive of Cooke's drill in place
of the belt drive of the earlier patterns. It had an improved manure box fitted
with cups for sowing the manure with the grain. Swing steerage enabled the operator
to move the coulters to the left or right to keep the line of sowing straight.
It was not, of course, the first combined drill. In 1800 James set up a business
in Peasenhall to manufacture the modified drills. His younger brother Jonathan
manufactured drills in Sweffling and another brother George set up a drill making
works in Ipswich in 1837.
The immediate market for the drill was amongst
the neighbouring farmers, of what was and is a predominantly arable district;
but a wider market was necessary if the infant firm was to prosper. Smyths'
sent out travellers, expert in the use of the drill, who exhibited the machines
in various markets and offered to do contract drilling for as. 6d. an acre.
This plan was successful, and contract drilling became the practice so far away
as Oxfordshire. The firm prospered and there were widely dispersed offshoots.
One of their employees, William Woolnough, went to Kingston-on-Thames and became
a partner in Messrs. Priest and Woolnough. . Woodgate Gower, a son-in-law, went
to Hook in Hampshire, and his sons later departed to such distant places as
Shropshire and Buckingham so that the influence of James Smyth was felt all
over the country during the nineteenth century.
The brothers were of the generation that marked
the beginning of end of 'the countryfolk'. In particular, James son and grandson
expanded the business by applying design and international marketing to the
mass production of drills in their Peasenhall works at a rate of between six
and seven drills a week. This works, behind the church, continued to make drills
to the same basic design, but with a steady input of innovations, until 1967.
Thereby, the Smyth family increased its fortunes and was a beneficent influence
on village life and the local economy. The Smyth design came to be known world
wide as the Suffolk Drill.
The age of industrial prosperity for Peasenhall
really began when James' son, James Jnr, took over the works in 1836. In his
catalogue published in 1840, he announced that he was the sole proprietor of
the Peasenhall works. He lists the following improvements he had made to the
Lever Corn Drill resulting from 20 years experience with his father and himself
as follows.
1 Cog work for drilling uneven surfaces- Cog Wheel
on the barrel that deposits the seeds works in a central position over the Cog
Wheel on the nave, so that when either scending or descending a hill--- never
before accomplished by any other maker.
2 Additional Box fitted for drilling seeds between
the rows of corn at the same time the corn is drilled.. This box can be used
by itself, replacing the usual box, for drilling seeds. The (new box adds to
appearance of machine)
J Allen Ransome in his book, The Implements of
Agriculture, published in 1843, summarised the improvements made by James Smyth
and his brother Jonathan to the Cooke drill as:
· A
mode of adjusting the coulters to distances apart from each other, from four
and a half inches and upwards.
· An
improved manure box, and cups for the delivery of manure with the corn.
· A
plan to drill in manure and corn, and sow small seeds at the same time.
· The
swing steerage, by which means the man attending the drill can move the counters
to the right or to the left hand, so as to keep the straight and parallel lines
for sowing the seeds.
· Various
improvements in gearing and driving the wheels, barrels etc.
It was probably James Jnr's patent that was accepted
in 16th May 1844, the year his father died. The innovations summarised in the
patent are:
1 The mode of arranging the bearings in respect
of the wheels of the axis (the sides of the box were reinforced with metal so
that the wheels were at right angles to the axle rather than at an inturned
angle to it;
2 The mode of arranging the revolving apparatus
for delivery of the manure at intervals (cog drive from main axle);
3 The mode of arranging the apparatus whereby
the seed can be delivered together with or separate from, the manure and the
earth covered over the manure before the seed is sown (levers and coulters);
4 The mode of sowing seed from two different
compartments by the same drill by two sets of cups being affixed on the same
axis and moving in the two separate compartments as above described (cups).