One of Comber’s greatest innovators with a number of very important patents to his name was John Allen, OBE, who was born at Unicarval House near Comber, County Down on the 15th October, 1856 and died on the 20th April, 1934 in England.

John Allen was a very committed Unionist and an active member of several Ulster Unionist Clubs. He was also a member of the Orange Institution.

Today John Allen is best remembered for the Company he founded at Oxford, England that became John Allen and Son’s Oxford in 1924. His Company famously produced the Allen Motor Scythe introduced in 1933. It was designed by John Allen at Unicarval and was much more than a simple mower as it could do all manner of tasks, for some farmers it did the work of a tractor and replaced the horse.

During the Great War John Allen was honorary advisor to the English Board of Agriculture, Machinery Section due to his agricultural expertise having widely travelled across the USA in particular looking at the latest tractors and farm machinery. In 1916 the people of the British Isles were only two weeks away from not having anything to eat because of the success of German U-boat attacks preventing grain shipments across the Atlantic. John Allen would persuade Henry Ford to put his revolutionary tractor into production the following year. Henry Ford was reluctant to build the tractor in the USA wanting it built in the UK instead, he would even gift the intellectual right to build the tractor to the British people. He did not really want to build tractors at all as he was unable to use the Ford brand name at that time. However UK manufacturing was under extreme pressure, and it was simply not possible to build the tractor in the UK.

placeholder image — John Allen pictures in 1898

John Allen realised that it was vital to get Henry Ford’s new ground breaking tractor into production as it was designed to be cheap to build and mass produced. He would crucially persuade the UK government to place an order for 6,000 tractors in 1917 on condition they be built first in the USA and later in the UK when conditions improved. The financial incentive worked and Henry Ford agreed to start production of the tractor in the USA named the M.O.M. as it was for the British Ministry of Munitions that was tasked with increasing food production and importing tractors. After the contract was complete the tractor was renamed in April, 1918 as the Fordson (Henry Ford and Son) Model F. This little grey tractor played such an important part in helping to grow crops to feed our nation at a time of great need. Production did eventually start in the UK at Cork, Ireland in 1919. The Fordson Model F would go on to be the most popular tractor ever built with over 750,000 examples produced. It would form the basis for development and experimentation of another County Down agricultural innovator and achiever Harry Ferguson and his Ferguson System.

After the war John Allen was awarded an OBE for his role in achieving increased food production across the UK and the important manufacturing capacity his own company at Oxford made in the manufacture of munitions.

It is possible that without the persuasive and innovatory thinking of John Allen, the M.O.M. and later Fordson tractors might never have been built.

Stevan Patterson, Castlederg