It’s not often that I get the chance to drive a 74-year-old vehicle these days, but that’s exactly what happened a few weeks ago when Stephen Neale kindly offered me a go behind the wheel of his beautiful, 1950 Massey-Harris 744D. As you’ll see as this story unfolds, it’s a tractor that’s led a very full life but, to look at it now, the uninitiated could certainly be forgiven for failing to appreciate its eventful past.
Stephen grew up on a tenant farm in Gloucestershire, where his father kept pigs and chickens. “I remember Dad buying me a Lesney model of a Massey-Harris tractor as soon as he thought I was old enough to play with it,” he recalled, “and I know he was very interested in tractors generally, even though we didn’t have the need of one on our farm. In those days, all the carting around and relocating of hen houses was accomplished using a succession of old cars!”
Moving on
“Unfortunately, we lost the farm when I was 15, following Dad’s death and, as tenants, we had no security and the landlord simply decided to let the farm go to somebody else. I left school at 18 and, without having a clear idea about what to do, made an appointment at what was then the Labour Exchange. I explained that I had an interest in agriculture and was offered a job on a poultry farm near Gloucester.”
Having taken the job, Stephen soon discovered that – coincidentally – he was working for the same poultry breeder that his father had used for many years, as the provider of his day-old chicks. After a while working with chickens, Stephen switched to a job with a pig breeding company, then moved onto a dairy and arable farm before enrolling
