Castlederg man restores historic Harry Ferguson TE20 tractor for its 80th anniversary
A Castlederg man has carefully restored an original Ferguson TE20 – “the most successful British-built tractor of all time” – just in time to mark its 80th anniversary.
According to Stevan Patterson the Ferguson TE20 was the “most famous and successful production tractor” ever designed by legendary Co Down inventor Harry Ferguson.
Born in 1884 in the townland of Growell, between Hillsborough and Dromore, Ferguson left school at 14 and designed much of the core technology still used worldwide in tractors today. He was also a pioneer in early flight and anti-lock braking.
Stevan, a County Tyrone man, told the News Letter he was thrilled to have found an original demonstrator model of the TE20 tractor, which was inspired by Ferguson's ambition to increase British wartime food production – later expanded into his vision to eradicate food poverty across the world.
Stevan said: “In the run-up to the tractor's 80th anniversary, I have been restoring a very special Ferguson TE20 that was once owned by John Malet Chambers, the man tasked by Harry Ferguson with getting the tractor into production and his chief engineer.
He bought it in 2024 after it was discovered resting in a shed, where it had been since 1985.
“And I have been carefully restoring the historic tractor over the last almost two years. With that restoration now complete, it is ready to celebrate its 80th birthday in style.”
The tractor had its official launch in a tent because of heavy rain on September 18 – 80 years ago this Friday.
The first Ferguson TE20 arrived in Northern Ireland around a month later, in October 1946, as they were manufactured at the Standard Motor Company’s Banner Lane plant in Coventry.
“By the time production ended in 1956, over half a million of these little grey Fergies had been built, with many exported around the world. The Ferguson TE20 remains the most successful British-built tractor of all time.”
It was closely based on the previous Ford-Ferguson, which followed a deal in 1938 between car manufacturing magnate Henry Ford and Ferguson.
The final TE20 design was completed in Northern Ireland in late 1945. It was almost built in Belfast, but Ferguson agreed that production would instead go to Coventry instead.
Ferguson had an unconventional background for an engineer.
He left school at 14 to work on the family farm, later working as an apprentice mechanic with his brother and studying at Belfast Technical College.
In 1909, he designed and built an aeroplane and became the first person to make a heavier-than-air flight on the island of Ireland.
During WWI, he designed his own tractor to increase yields and reduce labour costs, noting that the designs of the time were still based on horse-drawn implements.
As a result, he developed a three-point, triangular system to link implements to the tractor, as well as introducing hydraulics and a lift – all of which revolutionised the power, safety and control of farm implements pulled by tractors.
His belief was that his system of agricultural mechanisation could produce “for the first time in history, enough food to feed all the people of the world. . . [and] a new wealth to enrich the world. . . . That is our ambition. That is the course to which I am wholly dedicated”.