Oxford Ghost Signs: Oxfordshire Steam Ploughing Company
The crest at the top shows a steam engine with the date 1900 underneath
Below that is an original plaque reading:
THE OXFORDSHIRE / STEAM PLOUGHING COMPY / ENGINEERS.
This Dutch gable came from the entrance to the Oxfordshire Steam Ploughing Company (later John Allen & Sons) that was built in 1900. This photograph of Between Towns Road which dates from 1908/9 shows the above gable in its original position at the entrance to the business.
The old buildings of the company were demolished in the mid-1980s to make way for the John Allen Centre retail park. This gable was carefully reconstructed and rebuilt as shown below just around the corner facing Rymer's Lane:
The Oxfordshire Steam Ploughing Company 1868–1885
The Oxfordshire Steam Ploughing Company was founded by Walter Eddison and Richard Noddings in 1868 in High Street, Church Cowley (renamed Between Towns Road in c.1930). Until 1929 Cowley was not part of the City of Oxford, and the two “towns” that the road joined were Temple Cowley and Church Cowley.
The company originally just hired out steam engines (complete with water carts) to farmers.
On 6 January 1883 Walter Eddison and Richard Noddings announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal that their partnership had been dissolved a week earlier:
Walter Eddison (a solicitor's son who had been living at Iffley at the time of his marriage in 1875) continued to run the Oxfordshire Steam Ploughing Company on his own from the beginning of 1883.
The Oxfordshire Steam Ploughing Company from 1885, and John Allen (1857–1934)
In 1885 John Allen became a partner in the Oxford Steam Plough Company
John Allen was born at Unicarval House near Comber, County Down, Ireland in 1857, the only son of George Allen, Esq., who had bought that house in 1849. He had been educated at Cheltenham and began his business career in Leeds with the firm of John Fowler & Co, Engineers. By the time of the 1881 census John (23) was working for the Thomas Edison Company in Dorchester, Dorset and was lodging with a family there: he described himself as an engineer & manager of steam machinery.
On 26 November 1885 at Brympton, near Yeovil, Somerset, John Allen married Elizabeth House Jekyll Sampson (known as Bessie), the eldest daughter of the late John Sampson, Esq. They had four children:
- George John Graham Allen (born In Oxfordshire, probably at Wootten House, Iffley, in early 1887);
died aged 13 months and buried at Iffley on 25 February 1888 - George William Graham Allen (born at Wootten House, Iffley on 12 January 1891 and baptised at Iffley Church on 1 March)
- Phebe Elizabeth Jane Allen (born at Wootten House, Iffley in 1894 and baptised at Iffley Church on 29 June)
- James John Cullimore Allen (born at Wootten House, Iffley on 28 November 1895 and baptised at Iffley Church on 12 January 1896)
When the death of their first child was announced in the Belfast Telegraph he was described as the the son of “John Allen, Esq., Woolten [Wootten House], Oxford, and Unicarville, County Down, Ireland”.
In 1890 the Oxford Steam Ploughing Company also started making steam rollers. The following advertisement appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 13 July 1895:
At the time of the 1891 census John Allen (33) was living at Wootten House in Iffley with his wife Elizabeth (30) and their two-month-old son George William Graham Allen (listed as Graham W. Allen), plus three servants (a cook, nurse, and a housemaid). In this census John Allen described himself as an agricultural engineer, but at George's baptism in Iffley Church a month earlier he had described himself as a gentleman.
John Allen bought the Oxfordshire Steam Plough Company from the Eddison family in 1897.
In 1901 John Allen (44) described himself as a mechanical engineer and employer and was now living The Elms in Iffley (now the Hawkswell House Hotel) with his wife Elizabeth (40) and their two youngest children Phebe Elizabeth Jane Allen (6) and James John Cullimore Allen (5), plus their three servants (a nurse, cook, and housemaid). Their eldest surviving son James (10) was now a boarder at St Kenelm's School in Crescent Road, Cowley.
The photograph below taken by Henry Taunt in 1909 (Historic England HT13542) shows two steam road rollers outside the storage sheds of the Oxford Steam Ploughing Company (which was not in fact renamed John Allen & Sons until 1925):
In 1911 John Allen and his wife were at alone at home at the Elms with their servants. Their eldest surviving son George (20) was then a gentleman cadet in the Royal Artillery based at Woolwich and their two other children were at boarding school: Phebe (16) in Sussex and James (15) at Clifton College, Bristol.
In 1921 John Allen (64), who described himself as the Governing Director of the Oxfordshire Steam Plough Company, was still living at The Elms in Iffley, this time with all three of his children: George (30) and James (25), who were both described as managing directors at his company, and Phebe (27), plus their two servants.
John Allen retired soon afterwards and went back to Ireland to live for a short while before settling in Bournemouth. He died at McKinlay Road, Bournemouth at the age of 78 on 20 April 1934, and was buried in Iffley churchyard. His effects came to £123,369. He gave £500, the use of his residence, and £2,000 a year to his wife, while the bulk of the residue was left in trust for his three children. His obituary appeared in the Belfast Telegraph on 21 April 1934.
The 1939 Register shows his two sons and his widow still living in Iffley:
- James John Cullimore Allen lived at Wootten in Iffley with his wife Kathleen and their two children. He described himself as the Managing Director of John Allen & Sons Ltd, Engineers and Boiler Makers, Cowley, Oxford. Their butler and cook were also living with them, as well as a secretary and two shorthand typists who presumably worked for the firm.
- George William Graham Allen lived at The Elms in Iffley with his mother and another widow called Cecilia M. Chapman, both of whom were described as incapacitated, plus their companion, and a butler, housekeeper, and house parlourmaid.
John Allen's widow Elizabeth House Jekyll Allen died in Oxford at the age of 89 and was buried at Iffley on 29 October 1940.
John Allen's elder son George William Graham Allen died less than a month after his mother on 24 November 1940 at The Elms, Iffley at the age of 49 and was buried in Iffley churchyard. He left £1,000 to his old school Clifton College for the advancement and study of physical, chemical, or engineering science, and £1,000 each to Harry Harvey, secretary, Arthur Anderson, works manager, and F. J. Bretherton, of John Allen & Sons “as a token of appreciation, other loyal work and friendship to me at all times”. His biography is here.
John Allen's younger son James John Cullimore Allen was the Governing Director of John Allen & Sons when he received his OBE in 1949. He died in Shrewsbury in 1970.
After 1970
In Kelly's Directory for 1973 the firm was still listed as follows:
Allen, John & Sons (Oxford) Ltd, horticultural machinery mfrs, Cowley works, Between Towns rd, C, OX4 3LP
John Allen & Sons moved to Didcot and in 1976 the site in Cowley was taken over by Grove Cranes. They closed eight years later in 1984, and the site was redeveloped as the John Allen Centre.
See also:
- Archive of John Allen & Sons (Oxford) Ltd in the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading
- Northern Ireland Newsletter:
“Northern Ireland founder remembered as John Allen and Sons marks 100 years” - Carole Newbigging, Susanne Shatford, & Trevor Williams, The Changing Faces of Cowley (the first unnumbered book in the series of three), Section Two: “John Allen & Sons” (pp. 29–44)