Seven Gables Working Day

at Mullenan, Derry/Londonderry on Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th August

by WilLy Carson

“Y ou’re just the man I’m looking for,” said a voice behind me. It was Eddie Meenan, stalwart of the vintage scene in Ireland’s North West, “We’ll be holding a working day next year, and maybe you’d have time to come over and bring your camera.”

A conversation followed during which we put together a plan to document the ploughing, cultivations, sowing, harvesting, and threshing of a field of barley right on the Donegal border in the Foyle valley. Little did we think that further lockdowns during the proposed ploughing and cultivation period would interrupt our endeavours. Eventually restrictions eased and, as the harvest working day approached, all eyes turned to the weather forecast. Would it stay dry?

By the time of the event, much of the sixteen-acre field had been harvested, leaving enough to keep the vintage enthusiasts occupied and creating space for the rows of vintage tractors, machinery, cars, lorries and steam engines which turned up, adding to the spectacle.

It may have been cloudy, but it remained dry and the crop was in good shape when the Warren Scanlon took to the seat of his Ferguson FE35 ‘grey and gold’ and, with his father, Peter, at the controls of their Albion 5A binder, soon they were leaving a row of sheaves behind them. Owen McColgan and Sean Toland wasted no time pitching a load onto the trailer behind Tony Rodgers’s 1957 Industrial MF35 before heading back up the hill to the waiting Ransomes thresh mill. Driven by a contractor spec Field Marshall Series II, the thresher fed the threshed grain into jute bags and the straw into a Jones belted to a New Performance Super Major. There was a chance for the vintage combine to show that despite its years, it was still capable of cutting a sward or two before the pick-up baler cleared the straw into bales.

There was work for ploughmen in the next section of the field and what had been yellow was soon turned brown side up. In a special enclosure set aside for the Ferguson enthusiasts, Chris Gallagher demonstrated the abilities of the Ferguson ‘Butterfly’ reversible plough before attaching various implements to display the versatility of Harry Ferguson’s revolutionary three point-linkage system. It was during the cultivations demonstration that yours truly found himself in a spot of bother. My wee black notebook which has been my constant companion at vintage events for four years and contains contact details and photo captions for thousands of photographs went missing. I retraced my steps across the ploughed and disked ground with a growing sense of the futility of my quest until at last I found it, just where the Track Marshall with the discs was about to make its next pass. Phew!!

Despite the difficulties and uncertainties which face event organisers due to ‘you know what’ the Seven Gables Working Day, held in memory of Nellie McDaid and Pat Bradley, was a great success raising £8,000 for the Alzheimer’s Society and Ward C7 Antrim Area Hospital.

American built Ford 841 Powermaster with ‘Red Tiger’ diesel engine Warren and Peter Scanlon with their Albion 5A Binder

Tony Rodgers drives as another load is cleared off the field

Raymond McDaid’s Austin A60 Pick-up Chris Gallagher demonstrates the Ferguson Butterfly plough

Marshall model M