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- Herausgeber: Old Pond Books
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
The Doe Triple D became a legend in its own lifetime. It was one of the most unorthodox tractors ever built and had two engines, four wheel drive and could articulate through nearly 90 degrees. A very successful machine in its own time, it has remained a firm favourite among tractor enthusiasts everywhere. This illustrated account tells the full story of this remarkable tractor and the company that built it. The rise of Essex company Ernest Doe & Sons from a village blacksmith's shop to the largest machinery retail organization in East Anglia is traced in detail with full coverage given to the machines it made.
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‘Will you not covet such power as this…?’
JOHN RUSKIN
Stuart Gibbard
Published by Old Pond Publishing
Contents
Acknowledgements
This is the history of a family company and I am very grateful to Ernest Doe & Sons Ltd for allowing me to tell that story and making this book possible. In particular, I would like to thank Alan Doe, the current chairman, for his time and knowledge as well as access to the company archives. He has read my manuscript and was kind enough to offer very encouraging and positive comments as well as suggesting corrections and improvements where needed.
I could not have written this book without the assistance of Alan’s secretary, Eileen Hockley, a very organised lady who had all the information, photographs and records at her fingertips. I doubt whether there is anyone else in the company that knows more about Triple D tractors than she does. She has spent a great deal of time sorting out what I needed for my research and her help was invaluable.
Eileen’s husband, Derrick Hockley, although now retired, worked with Ernest Doe & Sons as apprentice, service engineer and salesman, and demonstrated the Triple D tractors sold onto farms in the U.K. He is recognised as the leading authority on the company and its products, and in particular, the Triple D and 130 tractors.
Even though Derrick has not been in the best of health recently, he still made me welcome and recounted his experiences with both patience and enthusiasm. I am very grateful to him for allowing me to share his knowledge and for kindly offering the use of his personal photograph collection. We spent many hours together or talking on the telephone and I am sure that we left no stone unturned or nut and bolt undone!
It is not the first time that Alan Doe, Eileen and Derrick have helped with one of my books, nor do I hope it will be the last. Alan and Eileen have attended several of my book launches, while I regularly meet up with Derrick at vintage shows across the country. This is the ideal opportunity to thank them for their continued support.
I must pay a special tribute to George Pryor, the man who was the inspiration behind the Triple D. George was kind enough to spend time with me going over the early development work and his reminiscences form an important part of this book for which I offer my sincere thanks.
I learnt a lot from Alwyn Blatherwick who runs the Doe Owners Club. Alwyn is a Triple D enthusiast and an expert on Doe tractors. He is a mine of information and I am very grateful for his time and assistance. I would also like to thank Kelvin Martin, the country’s leading collector of Doe memorabilia, for his enthusiastic help, and Ronnie Crow, Doe’s photographer during the Triple D period, for the loan of his negatives.
I am also indebted to Rob Atkinson, James Baldwin, John Blackbeard (Arable Farming), Stephen Burtt, Bob Cavill, Trevor Clark, Philip Cook (Lord Rayleigh’s Farms), David Cousins (Farmers Weekly), David Fisher, Brian Foot (Frank Foot & Son), Rita Franklin (Lord Rayleigh’s Farms), Nigel Ford, Steve Haylock, Peter Love, Peter Moore, Charlie Norman (Agrimac), Anna Oakford (Spindrift Photographic), Andrew Streeter, Peter Tewson (Agrimac), Michael Ward (Agrimac), Johnny Weal, Jan Wiggers and Paul Wylie. They have all been kind enough to provide information or photographs for either this book or my previous research on Doe tractors.
The usual thanks go to Roger Smith (publisher), Julanne Arnold (editor), Liz Whatling (designer), Lesley Smith (indexer) and Sue Gibbard (wife). They have all done such an excellent job that I have to be careful not to take them for granted.
Preface
Ernest Doe & Sons built just over four hundred and sixty tractors in less than ten years. Normally, such a short production run would not warrant a book of its own. But the Doe tractor was special, and so was the company that built it.
The Doe Triple D became a legend in its own lifetime and was one of the most unorthodox machines ever to appear on the market; it had two engines, four-wheel drive and could articulate through nearly 90 degrees. For the time, its performance was phenomenal; it was a sensation when it appeared in 1958 and it remains a sensation today with a following like no other tractor.
I first touched on the Triple D in one of my early books, Ford Tractor Conversions. That volume is long out of print, but it still creates interest and I regularly receive calls from enthusiasts asking about it and the chapter on Doe in particular. I felt that it was about time that I renewed my acquaintance with both the company and its famous tandem tractors.
I once owned a Triple D for several years so I know all its foibles, but the machine still fascinates me. I wanted to expand on my original research, and was determined to discover as much about Doe as possible. The result, I hope, will go some way towards satisfying the Triple D enthusiasts, while creating a new following among those yet to be entranced by this enigmatic machine.
It was impossible to tell the complete story of Doe tractors without delving deeper into the history of the company. It too was unique; Ernest Doe & Sons evolved from a small village blacksmith’s into one of the largest and most successful retail machinery organisations in the UK without forsaking its family traditions or values.
Space has precluded any more than a brief insight into the background and workings of the company. It deserves far more, but my main concern was with the machines that it built. For a fuller history of both Ernest Doe & Sons and the Doe family, I can heartily recommend Alan Doe’s own book, A Century of Service, published in 1998 and still available through the company.
The Triple D, the 130 and the other Doe tractors account for only about ten years of the company’s over 100-year history, but their importance must not be denied. They are the products that gave Ernest Doe & Sons worldwide recognition. The Doe name has a following as far afield as Holland, Germany, the USA and Australia. Ask tractor enthusiasts from these countries to name any other East Anglian machinery dealership …!
Stuart Gibbard July 2001
The author aboard his Triple D, taking part in the local village parade in 1990.
Foreword
By Alan E Doe, Chairman, Ernest Doe & Sons Ltd
I was very pleased to be invited by Stuart Gibbard to write the Foreword for his latest book. The DoeTractor Story.
The company’s success is very much due to the hard work, dedication and loyalty of the men and women of the firm during the past hundred years. Ernest Doe & Sons was built on principles and practices that are still valid today and I am proud that the company has survived favourably for four generations.
The story of the Triple D and Doe 130 tractors is the chief content of the book and credit for them must go to George Pryor who had the original idea and to my father, Ernest Charles Doe, who had the foresight to put them into production. Last but not least, credit must go to the often forgotten Charles Bennett, who engineered the tractor and was works manager until his premature death in 1963 – without him it might never have happened.
Plans were made and passed for a new factory of 18,000 sq ft at Ulting, but in the end it was not needed and therefore never built.
It never ceases to amaze me how much interest there is in our tractors after all these years and the prices they command. There is even a Doe Owners Club run by Nottinghamshire collector Alwyn Blatherwick.
I congratulate Stuart on the many painstaking hours of research he must have undertaken to produce this book. He has come up with some facts that I had either forgotten or not known!
ALAN E DOE June 2001
Alan E. Doe, the chairman of Ernest Doe & Sons Ltd., with one of his latest acquisitions – a Triple D tractor that costhim a small fortune compared to the original price!
Chapter 1
ERNEST DOE & SONS
Ernest Doe & Sons Ltd is a large agricultural and construction machinery dealership based at Ulting, near Maldon in Essex. The company is a highly successful retail organisation operating across most of East Anglia and south-east England. It is a proud family firm, steeped in tradition with its roots dating back to the nineteenth century.
The company’s founder, Ernest Doe, was born in 1876, the second son of Charles Joseph Doe, a miller from Terling in Essex. Once Ernest was old enough to work, he took his turn in the mill until his father felt that it was time for the boy to learn a trade of his own.
In March 1893, after Ernest had turned seventeen, Charles Doe arranged an apprenticeship for his son with the local blacksmith, Charles Wood, of Grays Farm in the nearby village of Hatfield Peverel. Wood’s blacksmith’s shop was at Ulting, a few miles south-east of Hatfield Peverel on the road to Maldon. The term of Ernest’s apprenticeship was four years, and his starting wage was six shillings per week.
The young apprentice evidently made an impression on his master, because when Wood wanted to retire five years later, he offered to lease the blacksmith’s shop to Ernest who took over the business with effect from 24 June 1898. Doe’s present depot at Ulting stands on the site of the original blacksmith’s shop, affectionately known locally as Doe’s Corner.
It was often said that Ernest Doe established a high reputation through ‘good, old-fashioned hard work and straight dealing’, leading to close connections with the local farmers, including James Havis of Southlands Farm, whose daughter he married in 1901. Ernest and his wife, Alice, had three sons, Ernest Charles, Hugh and Herbert Walter. As the business prospered, Ernest Doe bought the freehold of the blacksmith’s shop and acquired the neighbouring farm. He built a house, Hill View, next to the workshop in 1907.
Ernest Doe (third from the left) is seen shoeing a horse outside his blacksmith’s shop at Ulting in 1899.He had taken over the business the previous year and quickly established a good reputation for hard work and honest dealing.
All three of Ernest’s sons were expected to do their bit in the blacksmith’s shop, even while still at school. The eldest, Ernest Charles, was keenly interested in tractors and felt that they were the way forward for the future. He persuaded his father to attend the Ministry of Munitions disposal sales where they purchased second-hand Fordsons that had been used during the First World War and sold them on to local farmers.
The blacksmith’s shop at Ulting in 1908. Ernest Doe stands on the extreme right of the group. He both repaired machinery and acted as agent for a number of different makes of implements.
The major tractor trials were another source of inspiration; Ernest took his eldest son to the Lincoln trials in 1919 and again the following year. Ernest Charles wanted to buy the most powerful tractors at the trials, but his father curbed his enthusiasm and insisted that they would only consider the best. They were impressed with the performance of the cross-motor Case tractors, which were awarded a gold medal at the 1920 Aisthorpe trials, and wasted no time in securing an agency for these American machines.
The founder, Ernest Doe, who traded as the soleproprietor until Ernest Doe & Sons was formed in 1937.He remained senior partner of the firm until 1947.
An advertisement for Ernest Doe &Sons’ stand at the 1937Essex Show. It serves to demonstrate the range of tractorsand equipment handled by the firm at the time.
Ernest Charles married in 1927, and his son, Alan Ernest, was born two years later. The family business was flourishing and took on the agencies for Fordson and Allis-Chalmers tractors in 1930 and 1934 respectively. In 1937, Ernest Doe & Sons was formed with Ernest, Ernest Charles and Herbert as partners. The firm advertised itself as ‘The Tractor Specialists’ and held agencies for Case, Allis-Chalmers, Fowler, Fordson and Ransomes machines.
Doe’s Corner photographed from a field of Onward peas in April 1939. The original blacksmith’s shop can be seen on the right of the photograph, while the house on the left, Hill View, was built by Ernest Doe in 1906. The hanger in the centre formed the new workshop and had been acquired from the Eastern National bus company in Chelmsford after it became redundant when double-deckers were introduced.
The responsibility for running the firm fell increasingly to Ernest Charles, who also managed the tractor sales. In addition to the repair and retail side of the business, the partnership also offered an agricultural and industrial contracting service. This side was run by Herbert Doe while the third brother Hugh farmed both on his own account and with other land owned by the Doe family.
A Case LA in Ernest Doe & Sons’ yard in 1941. It was one of240 new tractors sold by the firm that year. The old Peterbro, Alldays,IHC Mogul and Fiat tractors in the background were all scrappedas part of the war effort.
This Case machine was one of the first combines sold by Ernest Doe & Sons. The firm had held the Case agency since the 1920s, but by theSecond World War it was also selling Allis-Chalmers, Fordson, Fowler, David Brown, Oliver, Caterpillar and Ransomes equipment. Ernest CharlesDoe can just be seen to the right of the tractor driver.
The clamour for machinery to increase food production during the Second World War saw a further growth in Doe’s business. In 1941, the firm sold a total of 240 new tractors – 94 Fordson, 8 David Brown, 62 Allis-Chalmers, 51 Case, 12 Caterpillar, 12 Cleveland Cletrac and 1 Oliver 80. The same year, Ernest Charles even allowed his collection of fifty veteran tractors to be scrapped for the war effort.
To save petrol during the war, it was suggested that Essex be divided up into sections with each agricultural dealership operating in its own zone. This would seriously have affected Doe’s business and lost it many of the customers that it had outside its own area. To counter this, the firm opened branch depots at Fyfield and Colchester in 1943. The Fyfield branch began in buildings at Pickerells Farm that had belonged to the Doe family since 1939, while the Colchester premises was a former coal merchant’s yard. A third branch at Gosfield was added in 1945 and was acquired from a Mr Farleigh who made trailers from old lorry axles.
Doe became Massey-Harris agents and added harvesting equipment to its already impressive stock list. The Massey-Harris agency was an important franchise for the firm as it gave it the opportunity to sell the new Model 21 self-propelled combines. After the war, Doe bought a number of ex-government Allis-Chalmers HD crawlers and reconditioned them for sale to farms across the country. The firm also replaced the petrol-paraffin engines in a number of ex-ministry Caterpillar R4 crawlers with diesel power units.
Ernest Doe &Sons’ stand at the 1951Royal Show. Leftto right are a Fordson E27N equipped with a Dormansprayer,a David Brown Super Cropmaster, a Nuffield Universal, a David Brown Trackmaster, a Hanomag crawler, an Allis-Chalmers Model Band a Tayler-Doe silage harvester.
A Massey-Harris 744D tractor inside Doe’s main workshop in about 1953. This building, originally part of the bus depot in Chelmsford,still forms part of the complex of buildings at Ulting today.
The stores at Ulting during the 1950s. Ernest Doe & Sons Ltd. had been incorporated in 1947 and Massey-Harrisremained one of its most important franchises until it became a Fordson main dealer.
Ernest Charles Doe, the eldest son of the founder and thefirst chairman and managing director of Ernest Doe &Sons Ltd from
