While we’ve featured plenty of individuals with large tractor collections in this magazine over the years, I can’t recall many articles spotlighting a small group of enthusiasts who have come together to create what’s effectively a tractor preservation collective. So let me introduce you to the HDH Collection. It’s not a club, or any sort of money-making enterprise; it’s simply a collaboration between a handful of like-minded tractor owners who are dedicated to saving, restoring and using the machines in their care.
Clive Hartright owns the facilities at which the collection is based. He’s been a tractor enthusiast from an early age, and it’s his farm in rural Berkshire – to the west of Newbury – that provides the storage space and workshop facilities needed to house, restore and maintain the 125 tractors that now make up the HDH Collection.
Starting young
“It all started when my grandfather bought me a secondhand, 1942 Fordson Standard N in the late 1950s, when I was 12 years old,” Clive explained. “I used that tractor mainly for ploughing matches, but was also working on the farm long before I left school. In those days the farm was running a couple of E27Ns, plus a not-very-good International B250. Then I remember that we upgraded to an E1A and, after that, a Ford 4000; the latter was a marvellous tractor in its day.”
Then, when Clive was 19, he decided to
