Threshing with a flail, a medieval illustration.
‘Machine breaking’ directed at the threshing machine is synonymous with the Swing Riots that broke out in southern England in 1830. The proceedings of the Grand Assize held in the Great Hall, Winchester, is replete with references to the smashing of a contraption that was widely regarded by farm workers as responsible for much of the poverty experienced by them at the time.
Threshing (or thrashing) for the separation grains of various kinds from the ear was for centuries performed using a simple flail. It was dirty, dusty, backbreaking work carried out by farm workers, family and friends in the late autumn and winter, but had the benefit of providing an income during a quiet time in the farming year and it brought communities together.
​Many people with a mechanical bent had tried to mechanise it from as early as 1636, but it was not until about 1785 (patented 1788) that Andrew Meikle, a millwright and civil engineer who lived at Houston Mill, Prestonkirk (pictured above), on the doorstep of Edinburgh, came up with a design that was sufficiently efficient to be adopted widely. In essence, the corn was drawn into a machine by fluted rollers, and beaten by wooden bars or ‘scutchers’ attached to a large rotating drum. Grain and chaff fell into a container, and rakes and another roller drew out the straw. Within a short time Meikle’s invention, and many pirated versions, were in use in the Lowlands and Northumberland, and soon in many other parts of the North, where would-be farm workers were draw to better paid work in industry.
Andrew Meikle (1719-1811), millwright and mechanical engineer of East Lothian, inventor in c1785 of a threshing machine that quickly became adopted.
Thrashing machine based on Meikle’s principle: rollers AA draw in the sheaf-corn, scutchers on drum B beat off the grain, rakes on drum D draw on the products, the grain and chaff fall through riddles FGH and drum I draws out the spent straw (D. Low, 1838, Elements of Practical Agriculture, 2 ed, Fig. 41).
It was also in use fairly early in the South, though there are disputes amongst experts about precise figures. Certainly by 1800 there was at least one manufacturer in Hampshire, namely, R. Thompson in Wickham. His machine was powered by two horses, attended by one man, one woman and three children, and boasted speedy threshing of wheat, barley and oats. In 1810 Charles Vancouver wrote in his General View of Agriculture in Hampshire: ‘Thrashing-
Mills [sic] – Have been erected of late years at a very heavy expense in many parts of this county’, and he then went on to recite many details.
The files of the Hampshire Chronicle confirm that threshing machines only appeared in the county after 1800 and grew in use over the next 30 years. For sale in Froxfield was ‘an excellent threshing-machine, winnowing fan and tackle’, at Fairthorn, Botley ‘late in the occupation of Mr Cobbett…a capital portable thrashing machine on an improved principle, patent winnowing-machine’ and at Embley Farm, near Romsey, a ‘threshing-machine of 6-horse-power…complete with a large convenient Barn for working the same [presumably to be re-erected elsewhere]’. There were also machines for sale at Exton and later at Petersfield, by George Rich, a millwright.
Relic of one of Meikle’s original threshing machines seen from the ‘feed end’ on a farm site at Beltondod, Dunbar Common (Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian & Field Naturalists’ Society, 1968, XI, p. 89).
Threshing machine powered by four horses (manufactured by Barrett, Exall & Andrewes, Reading).
In 1811-12, they were on the agenda at the Stratton Estate, East Stratton, and within a few years were definitely in use in the south of the county, at Catisfield and Titchfield (HRO, 71M92/B23; 92M95/NP2/S16/1/27-28). At Stratton, developments in threshing machines were being closely followed by Francis (‘Frank’) Callender, the agent of Sir Thomas Baring (1772-1848), a man to be much involved in the Swing Riots, who had recently inherited the
estate from his father, Sir Francis Baring (1740-1810), the founder of Barings Bank. Returning to the Grand Assize, Richard Collis a labourer from Micheldever confirmed that the rioters had with ‘hammer and pickaxe beat the [threshing] machine to pieces’ in a succession of places. Nothing could justify such behaviour, according to Baron Vaughan, the senior judge, who in his opening address pointed out that, if so, the same argument ‘would
also apply to the abandonment of the use of the flail, the spade, the hoe, the axe, or any other, even the rudest instrument…’ And in his sentencing speech he reminded Henry Cook, also from Micheldever, who was to be hanged, that he had been ‘actively engaged in breaking 12 machines at least…’.
Some landowners, lawyers and the like were clearly either unable to understand the dilemma of farm workers, or sought to maintain a position that justified the sentences handed out at the trial. Similar arguments have been advanced for virtually all new developments – in the century before the Swing Riots it was the turn of the textile workers, culminating in the Luddites (Ned Ludd = Captain Swing!) and today it perhaps AI.
In 1830, most threshing machines were powered by horses walking in a circle about 20 ft in diameter, though in principle they could be powered by water or wind. By 1850 they were powered by steam, and today, of course, they are hidden in the bulk of the ubiquitous combine harvester, where the importance of properly setting the gap between the ‘beater bars’ and the ‘concave’ still echoes Meikle’s invention of 1785.
Further reading​
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Agnew, J, 2024, The nineteenth century evolution of the threshing machine in Britain, The International Journal of the History of Engineering and Technology, 94: 152-77.
Collins, ECT, 1972, The diffusion of the threshing machine in Britain, 1790-1880, Tools and Tillage, 2: 16-33.
Collins, ECT, 1987, The rationality of ‘surplus’ agricultural labour: mechanization in English agriculture in the nineteenth century, Agricultural History Review, 35, pt 1, 36-46.
Cartwright, N, 1968, The Meikle Threshing Machine at Beltondod, Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists’ Society, XII, 71-80.
Dodd, W & J, 2010, Man of invention, bicentenary of Andrew Meikle (1719-1811), civil engineer and millwright, Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists’ Society, XXVIII, 43-77.
Fox, NE, 1978, The spread of the threshing machine in central southern England, The Agricultural History Review, 26:26-8.
Macdonald, S, 1975, The progress of the early threshing machine, The Agricultural History Review, 23:63-77.
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Macdonald, S, 1978, The progress of the early threshing machine: a rejoinder, The Agricultural History Review, 26:29-32.
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