Marshall question

A couple of clues have emerged - looking in my 1977 copy of "Who owns Whom?", Marshall was owned at that time by British Leyland and had been merged with Aveling. Googling Aveling Marshall took me here:-

Which rather suggests that Marshall was very much on its last knocking by the mid 1990's.

Trawling around on Weatherill (remember that 'WEATHERILL 501' serial number) I found a range of hydraulic loaders, diggers etc which seem to be remembered mainly in die cast toys. The connection with Marshall if any? No idea! Most likely candidate in WoW? is F E Weatherill of Welwyn Garden City.

This is hardly ancient history and with the number of engine men who have a background in agricultural and construction plant, somebody must remember.

Nick,Marshalls of Gainsborough bought the tractor line from British Leyland at Bathgate.Marshalls top man at that time was Sir Charles Nickerson (sp) who was often used as an example of what a forward thinking industrialist should be by Margaret Thatcher.Anyway against the wishes of his management he produced more tractors than he could sell and when all his money was parked in the yard went down the tubes.This would be in the early/mid eighties as I bought machines out the factory after it closed.BL did not want to sell the tractor line,it was about the only good product they had but I think goverment made the decision. mark.

Thanks for that Mark. The timing of Marshall's aquisition of the Leyland range coincides with the post nationalisation cull of BL assets under Michael Edwardes. Still no idea why they might have been dabbling in Chinese engines or the Weatherill connection though.

Just finished reading Michael Edwardes` book Back From The Brink.Quite a good read if you like that sort of thing.BL still had the tractors when he went,but M Thatcher had just came into power and unlike the Labour goverment didn`t have any reason to keep the ex shale miners of central Scotland happy.I had a couple of hours conversation with Marshalls factory manager after it had closed and his version was that all the publicity had went to Nickersons head and he thought everything he touched would be a winner.The old guy`s passed on or I could have asked him about the Weatherill connection. regards,Mark.

Just finished reading Michael Edwardes` book Back From The Brink.Quite a good read if you like that sort of thing.BL still had the tractors when he went,but M Thatcher had just came into power and unlike the Labour goverment didn`t have any reason to keep the ex shale miners of central Scotland happy.I had a couple of hours conversation with Marshalls factory manager after it had closed and his version was that all the publicity had went to Nickersons head and he thought everything he touched would be a winner.The old guy`s passed on or I could have asked him about the Weatherill connection. regards,Mark.

Nick,do a google for "marshall of gainsborough".Fair bit of info,especially the first result "rural history" Mark

I have a brochure, I think I got it in the early 1990's, "Nettleham Engineering Co. Ltd" whose address is Britannia Works, Beaumont st. Gainsborough.

The cover has photos of an impressive old road frontage and an aerial shot of what appears to be an intact large works.

I presume this is Marshalls old works?

They were advertising themselves as the UK's largest machine tool dealers and there are impressive photos of tall halls full of machine tools.

I kept the brochure, hoping to visit one day....

Old Glory #48-51 has a history of the Marshall MP6 tractor. It is a bit erratic, but it covers some of Marshalls past history, but nothing I recall about what came after the MP6.

Michael Lanes Fowler history says Fowler and Marshall merged in 1946, but that Fowler became largely passive thereafter. When he wrote his book (1980), Aveling & Marshall Ltd were still trading as part of British Leyland, selling crawlers, road rollers and other 'special equipment'

I have just bought a little booklet "The Rise and Fall of Aveling Barford 1933 to 1988", published in 1997. It says that they were still trading at that time as Wordworth Holdings, but still had an A-B division.

I am interested to hear any of the recent history of Marshall too!

They closed a couple of years ago, Ray Hooley has all the Clayton Shuttleworth drawings etc stored in their premises.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

Aveling Barford is very much alive and well and as you say is one of the companies in the Wordsworth Holdings group.I read somewhere on the net that Wordsworth was American owned which is untrue,the major shareholder is H.D.Wordsworth who is very much an Englishman. Nettleham did trade out of Marshall`s building and originally was run by Mr Clarke who was Marshalls manager when they built tractors there.Unfortunately their stock of machines were not what the market was looking for(old,broken) and when they finally called it a day and had an auction most of it went abroad. regards,Mark.

wrote (snip):-

Yes, I do. But I'm reading the Lunar Men at the moment, these guys (Boulton, Watt, Wedgwood &c &c) were in at the birth of British industry rather than presiding over its death.