The application of steam to agriculture spurred on change in the countryside. It was mainly used for driving threshing machines, used to separate the grain from cereal crops, which was originally a very labour-intensive process.

Hollycombe's open barn contains a range of machinery driven by belting from a line-shaft. The steam engine, a Robson horizontal, was built over 100 years ago and came from the now demolished Basing House at Basingstoke. The building also contains stables for our horses as well as a dairy and cider room.

The Open Barn


Farmland and Ponies


Steam Ploughing

More specialised agricultural engines were the large Ploughing Engines, mostly built by John Fowler & Co. of Leeds, with a cable winch drum slung under the boiler. Two engines were needed to work at opposite sides of a field pulling a plough attached to the cable between them.

Hollycombe have two engines, one a 1917 Fowler BB Class named Prince, the other the last engine made by John Allen & Co. of Oxford and these give demonstrations of Steam Ploughing at the Steam Rally.