Birthplace of Harry Ferguson

Hey Ya'll......

We received an e-mail a few weeks back from Trevor Mitchell who lives in Northern Ireland, the birthplace of Harry Ferguson. Trevor sent us a few pictures of the birthplace site which you can see here in this post. I thought that this was very interesting, especially if you are interested in the history of old tractors and in particular the Ferguson tractor.

As you may or may not know, Harry Ferguson was very instrumental in the development of the early tractor and some of the innovations that made these early tractors more efficient and useful.

Trevor lives in Bangor, in Co Down along the shores of Belfast Lough about 30 miles away from Harry's birthplace. You can see a cool looking flower popping Ferguson in the memorial garden directly across the road from Harry's birthplace in the townland of Growell outside Hillsborough in County Down. (South West of Belfast just south of the M1 motorway). Here's a picture of it!



The garden was opened on 21st Aug 2008 and that day his granddaughter Sally Flemming, who had traveled from London, unveiled the life size bronze statue of Harry seen in the picture below.



Note he is carrying in his hand the Ferguson spanner. When the statue and gate were brought together it was discovered the top bar of the gate was the same height as his eyes, so to avoid this, they had him stand on a stone so you could see his face over the top gate bar.

Each year they have a big celebration at the field beside the house when tractors from all around attend. Here are some of the old Fergusons (among others) that were line up at a recent event in the field.



Harry was known not only for tractors and their development, but for a racing car as well. And, he was also the very first person in Ireland to build and pilot his own plane.  The house where Harry was born can be see in the photo here below.



We want to give thanks to Trevor for sharing this all with us and to Ulster-Scot.com for allowing us to use the pictures that Trevor sent to us and provided provided by them.

Enjoy the photos!