There are some items we just can’t take at our museum. To comply with ‘rules’ all items must be protected from the weather so we cannot take items which won’t fit in our little cottage. We’d have loved to have been able to take this hay rake which has survived, pretty happily, in the great outdoors above Court Close Farm in Easterton. Sadly we have to make do with photographs.

Hayrake used by the Williams family of Easterton

Well it certainly looks like something from a past age, with its all metal wheels and little seat for an operator to perch on, but this was certainly used in the age of tractor haulage.

Definitely a tractor hauled item by this stage

The view from this direction shows the towing connector narrowing down to fit a point on the tractor, rather than having parallel bars to fix either side of a horse. It may have been converted, at some time, from horse haulage to tractor towed.

It really is a hefty piece of engineering. The seat carries the name of the manufacturer.

The manufacturer is named on the operator’s seat.

They were W N Nicholson and Son of Newark, England.

We think, but without certainty, that this rake dates from the 1920s.