| Abstract | The Combine Harvester does it all these days, but I can remember when the sheaves from the horse or tractor-drawn binder had to be waggoned into Gate House Farm, Birch, there to await the availability of the outfit owned by Mr Folkard of Copford, but known locally as Tom Barnes's Threshing Tackle, after the man who drove the engine.
How vividly I recall the scene: Steam Engine, Thresher and Elevator in processional splendour as they rounded the corner near the village hall where the tall elms stood.
The Engine possessed no canopy or spiral brasses as did its fairground relations; it had never known their garish, fascinating world of roundabouts and swinging boats; yet its attraction was identifiable with these things.
In brass lettering on the front of the awesome boiler was the maker's name, and as thought conscious of the proud title beneath it an impressive smoke-stack loftily surveyed the horizon, while signifying its disapproval of affairs-in-general by belching an infernal mixture of black smoke and sparks heavenwards.
When in working positions a connecting-belt from the engine's massive flywheel drove the thresher (or "Drum", in local farming jargon) which was a near-oblong wooden platform-topped structure about eight feet high by twelve feet long by six feet wide, interspersed with various pulleys and belts and mounted on four iron wheels.
The sheaves of corn were pitchforked from the stack or wagon to the platform, and fed into an opening in the top of the thresher by hand after the sheaf-bands or "self-binding" string had been cut.
Inside the thresher, machinery which consisted of a revolving steel drum and its half-encircling concave, shakers, oscillating collecting boards, riddles, and air fans, separated the grain from straw, chaff, dust, stones and weed seeds, these impurities being passed out of various openings and spouts during the process.
The winnowed grain was then delivered by an endless belt and cup elevator to a final dressing and polishing apparatus, and from there to a rotary screen which sorted it into two sizes and delivered it to the bagging spouts.
The thresher, in turn, drove the elevator or straw-pitcher, an escalator-like construction incorporting chain-driven steel tines which conveyed the separated straw from the thresher to the stack builders.
Even in its non-working processional docility this ensemble was fearsome enough when encountered on the highway, but once installed in the farmyard, engine snorting and clanging, belts slapping, "Drum" humming and vibrating, the whole pervaded by dust and flying thistle-down, it became the stuff of small boys' dreams.
And from his eyre overlooking the tumultuous boiler, Tom Barnes, a stern faced, heavily moustached, blue clad, awe inspiring figure, dispensed steam, power, noise, and smoke in relevant proportions, with dispassionate impunity.
Threshing at East Mersea Hall during WW2. The threshing machine is behind the cart and the elevator to the right. The steam engine is off to the left.
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