Two famous old engineering firms became a joint two million pound enterprise in the autumn of 1918 with over a hundred acres of factories and 12,000 men. Ruston & Proctor of Lincoln and Richard Hornsby & Sons of Grantham had been kept busy in the First World War. To their traditional industrial and agricultural products had been added all manner of military equipment. At Ruston these included Sopwith-designed aircraft from a factory set up at Boultham, Lincoln in 1915. One of these, a BE2C, brought down a Zeppelin at Cuffley, Herts in one of the earliest boosts to British morale and a further 2,500 were made, plus engines for them. Other products included 440 tractors based on Holt Caterpillar designs, 4,000 water carts, a million shells, 2,500 trench pumps, 8,000 Lewis guns and, believe it or not, a hundred portable pigeon lofts and 600,000 horseshoes.
The return of peace and abrupt cancellation of the aircraft contracts left an enormous void at Boultham. Skilled carpenters and the surplus wood for fuselages led to furniture and van body production, but something
