The Great Tapestry of Scotland by Alistair Moffat

Author:Alistair Moffat [Moffat, Alistair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857906564
Publisher: Birlinn

Panel stitched by:

Cammo Quilters

Katherine Forsyth

Rosemary Gordon-Harvey

Avril Green

Elizabeth Reekie

Gillian Swanson

Norma Watkins

Caroline Watson

Stitched in:

Edinburgh

PANEL 65 James Small and the Swing Plough, 1770

Scottish agriculture had long been hampered by poor technology. The Auld Scots Ploo was built mostly of wood tipped by iron and it took a team of four powerful oxen to pull it through the ground. It often broke down when it hit big stones or roots. And because it did not turn the sod completely, the auld ploo needed an army of plough followers to break up big clods and pull out weeds. In the 1770s, a Berwickshire blacksmith, James Small, perfected the swing plough. Cast all in iron at the Carron Ironworks, it had a screwed shape that turned the sod over completely, could be pulled by one strong horse and guided by one skilled man. Because it ploughed a deeper furrow, the swing plough improved drainage and brought more land into cultivation. Small was a perfectionist who worked on his prototypes endlessly and even spent time in prison as a debtor. He did not patent his design and consequently it was imitated very widely. This in turn accelerated the speed of change on the land and its adoption on the prairies of the USA and Canada made these regions into the breadbaskets of the world. Even now James Small is little known and his huge contribution to the modern world badly understood. He died in 1793 of overwork and in great poverty. The swing plough changed cultivation radically and, by doing that, it changed the world.

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