Thursday History

Yesterdays picture of the Howard Land Drainer with a reduction box started me thinking. Some have heard of the other Howard product, the Rotovator, but Howard was involved in a number of agricultural machines, some successful others not.They started to build there own tractor with a rotovator built in but soon moved to making stand alone machines for other makes like the Fordson N and Fordson E27N Major.

Howard was founded in Wagga Wagga, Australia and there is a small museum on Lord Baden Powell Drive in the town. The company then moved to England and set up a factory building various sizes of Rotovator, originally called a rotary hoe, for horticulture and farm work. Horticultural machines from the Bantam to the large Gem were the Rolls Royce of the horticultural world until the introduction of the side drive Honda machines in the 1970's. Other Howard products were the Rotaspreader, barrel type muck spreader, very popular, simple machine, great until you get a side wind and have no cab! Then there was the Howard Harvestore grain and grass silo with its glass coated panels. The company also made the very popular Massey Ferguson 30 grain drill at a factory in Diss, a few miles from me in Norfolk.

In the 1970's they tried to get into the big baler market but were not successful, other companies were building Rotaspreader types when the patents ran out and the company folded. The drill manufacture was taken over by Dowdeswell for a short time until they too ran into financial difficulties and the rotovator business was taken over by Standen-Pearson Machinery of Ely who is still producing machines based on the Howard design.
Howard Tractor

Thanks for that history. I had ever only knew of their Rotavator.

So that answers my question from yesterday about the rotavator. The Howard Power Arm backhoe also had the name McConnell on it. So maybe whoever built it was not the company selling it?

McConnel made a number of hedge cutters, ditchers and back hoe type loaders. The name Power Arm was applied to the base unit on the tractor which could have different assemblies fitted to it, like hedge cutter, power saw and ditcher/light duty back hoe. I would suspect that Howard was the selling agent or had them badge engineered.

The McConnel back hoe/loader was a weird design that lifted with a parallel linkage, which, as you lifted, came back in your face so you had to move to one side. When cabs became standard on tractors, a sub frame had to be added to prevent that happening as a few operators were crushed between the arm and the rear of the cab.