S E Davis

As I said in my second to last post, I am now at S E Davis, a family run firm in worcestershire (http://www.sedavis.co.uk). One of the passions of the family is vehicles and they have a staggering collection of agricultural and construction vehicles. THe range is truely remarkable, they have steam engines dating from the late 19th century and very early 20th century, through to internal combustion vehicles in production in the late 20th century, and a huge amount in between. The collection of crawler tractors is particularly large (I have catalogued 114 and ! haven’t reached the end of the collection yet). Reading like a list of major tractor firms, the collection includes Cletrac, Caterpillar, Fiat, International Harvester, Fowler, Bristol, Allis-Chalmers, Vickers, Ransomes and so on.

They also have possibly one of the oldest surviving living vans, made by John Fowler of Leeds in the late nineteeth century.

Many of the items have amazing stories attached to them, for example there is a Cletrac aircraft tug which saw service in WWII and a Cletrac crawler that ploughed snow at the white house and ended it’s life working at Greenham Common airbase, where it was riden on by Margaret Thatcher.

Even if the vehicles weren’t involved in high profile events, they have built our modern world, and carry the stories of the countless people that have used them. Walking through the sheds and fields of sleeping giants, or scrambling between the trailed mowers it’s imposible not to think of those men and women who have used them, and one can almost hear their voices echoing down through the ages.