Captain Swing & the Traction Engine

How the face of the Sussex countryside changed forever.

By Philip Morgan

“In the valleys of Sussex, men once worked with the land, not against it. The long lines of scythes, cutting through wheat and barley, followed the contours of hills and fields shaped by generations.” Hilaire Belloc.

As a young boy in rural Sussex in the 1820’s living in a tied cottage that belongs to the landowner you are part of a way of life that hasn’t changed for over 300 years. At harvest time at noon off you go to find your dad who’s cutting the landowner’s wheat.

You give him his lunch of bread and a lump of the local hard cheese. And then hang around watching the sheaves being loaded onto a waggon.

You’re hoping to get a crafty lift back to the Great Barn

Alciston tithe barn, from the west by Stefan Czapski

Where the sheaves’ll be stacked and then threshed by your dad and his friends through the winter.

Life was tough but secure. Your family had lived there for generations. You had a roof over your head year-round as your dad worked at the threshing. Why should any of this change?

In 1787 a Scotsman called Andrew Meikle invented the threshing machine.

French illustration of a horse-powered threshing machine

This used a drum with mechanical beaters instead of the traditional wooden hand beaters to separate the grain. It massively increased the speed of threshing, which meant it could be done immediately after or even during harvest rather than throughout the winter. Therefore it reduced the number of men needed year-round and so the wages bill. Your landlord was an enthusiast when it came to saving money. He got one and a lot of your friends’ dads lost their jobs and their cottages. Your dad was good at fixing the carts and pumps and mechanical stuff on the estate so fortunately he was put on the threshing machine crew. Your family was safe for now, still had the cottage and food year-round not like your mates who were now missing somewhere on the road.

One night in November 1830 you overhear your mum and dad talking about how the men who were losing their jobs were starting to fight back, sending letters to landlords signed Captain Swing threatening mayhem unless their jobs were secured, their wages put up and the threshing machines destroyed.

Captain Swing letter to Mr Biddle, farmer, High Wycombe reads:

“This is to acquaint you that if your threshing machines are not destroyed by you directly we shall commence our labours signed on behalf of the whole - Swing”

Your mum and dad have a big row. Your dad wants to join the rebels. Your mum says it’s bound to end badly and he has to keep his head down put his family first. She wins, as usual, and you put your head down and go back to sleep.

Hayricks and threshing machines are set on fire in Ringmer and Glynde but no one is hurt.

Your dad brings home the “Sussex Advertiser” and reads out the headline. “Malcontents are …promoting tumult.” Your mum goes white and says “mark my words the next thing is the army’ll be called in and then God help us all.” You get frightened.

Then a thousand men get together in Horsham and demand the local magistrates authorise raising their wages to 2s 6d per day (£8.50 a day in today’s money). The army is called in. Your mum is always right.

Your dad is full of stories. Two thousand protesters arrested. Trials at Lewes assizes. Two hundred and fifty-two sentenced to death. Nineteen hanged. The rest sent with another nine hundred men to prison or transported to Australia.

Your dad says they’re heroes. Your mum tells him to shut up unless he wants to end up on the end of a rope. You have a lot of trouble sleeping that night imagining your dad swinging on the end of a rope.

Your dad does what he’s told. He makes sure the threshing machine is working well. He becomes part of the crew that goes from farm to farm with it. Your mum makes sure you go with him. “If you can’t beat them join them,” she says. You become the water boy. It’s an awkward business moving the threshing machine. It’s big and heavy. You need horses to pull it and horses to operate it. In 1841 your landlord goes to the Royal Agricultural show sees and buys the latest thing; a portable steam engine. Ransomes & Sims, Ipswich, Suffolk, England, pre-1871

Your dad and you! are put in charge of it. Are you excited? Yes. Your mum is delighted. Your dad terrified. “What if we blow it up?” But you don’t. You’re eighteen and really into it, love the machine. Soon you’re off with it dragging it from farm to farm. You make sure it works a treat. It does put more men out of work and families on the road but that’s progress.

The landowner is always looking for ways to make more money so when in 1860 at the Smithfield show he sees the first Thomas Aveling traction engine he buys one. He puts you at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, your dad has passed away, in charge and hires you and the crew out to even more neighbouring farms. You make sure your twelve-year-old son always comes along!

The village is totally different now from when you were eight. Hardly any workers or horses around. No more threshing in the Great Barn. But you and your family are doing well. The landowner says you’re indispensable.

As your great, great, great, great, granddaughter will say as she drives her combine harvester, through a massive wheat field while her son drives the tractor that receives the grain beside her. “Technology whether it’s a traction engine or Artificial Intelligence is unstoppable.”

Your mum would have been proud and very relieved and of course proved right! “If you can’t beat them join them.”