Last week, I dropped in to the Kverneland Ireland Future of Farming exhibition in the Hub, Cillin Hill, Kilkenny, and was delighted to see the vintage McConnel hedgecutter holding pride of place on one side of the exhibition. McConnel was the first manufacturer to offer a tractor-mounted hedgecutter and the machine at Kilkenny was one of the very early models.

McConnel’s original colour was not the yellow of today but the green that the machine built around a Ford Major tractor was presented in. This model was launched at Britain’s Royal Show in the summer of 1948.

The concept of a mid-mounted hedgecutter was invented by a Scottish farmer named Gilmour. He sold the rights to the design to Freddie Whigham McConnel, who founded McConnel in 1935.

ADVERTISEMENT

McConnel renamed the machine the Mid-Mount Mark I hedgecutter and this made McConnel the first company to manufacture a tractor-mounted hedgecutter. The concept was to revolutionise hedgecutting by giving significant improvements in speed and efficiency compared with manual hedgecutting.

The machine was built around the tractor with a horizontal frame carrying a 2hp Petter petrol engine on the offset side from the hedgecutting knife blade. This design allowed for balance and the high position of the frame was designed to even out the weight across the full width of the tractor for stability.

The cutting angle was controlled by a series of cables.

The cutting height was fixed by a series of pins, which could be adjusted but not while on the move.

The 1958-’59 version of the Farm Mechanisation Directory lists the mid-mounted McConnel hedgecutter as the only machine of its type available in Britain and Ireland. McConnel offered a saw head blade as well as a reciprocating-type knife system. The flail hedgecutter heads that are now widely used were not available, probably due to their higher power needs.

Other manufacturers followed with slightly different designs, including Bomford and Allan Fuller. The concept was retained up until the 1970s in the Hydrocut machines.

McConnel also offered a loader-mounted version of this hedgecutter. It had a long frame with the slightly larger 3hp Petter engine that was once again offset from the hedgecutter attachment.

At that time, McConnel’s main product was a tractor- or engine-powered saw bench and by the early 1950s the company had sold more than 10,000 of them across Britain and Ireland.

The real boost for McConnel came with the development of the rear-mounted McConnel hedgecutter in 1953, based on the rear-mounted Power Arm Universal with a host of different attachments. The concept allowed the Power Arm to be used to operate a wide variety of machines and was the springboard for the company’s success to this day.

The original McConnel mid-mount hedgecutter was imported into Ireland in the mid-1950s by David Brown Tractors (Eire) Ltd. This was the Irish division of the British tractor company, which was then based at 23 Essex Quay in central Dublin. David Brown was selling the 25D tractor for £530 and the larger six-cylinder 50D model for £1,075 at that time, along with the McConnel hedgecutter for £170.

Blanch hedgecutters, imported by JH Donnelly and Teagle by Thomas Thompson, were the only competing machines on the market, although Ferguson offered a compressor driven handheld unit at that time.

The McConnel Power Arm Universal concept was first imported by Dermot (DH) Sherrard, Ballintemple, the Cork-based farmer and machinery importer, in the early 1960s, when he took over the agency from David Brown Tractors. The McConnel Power Arm was listed among the machines on the Sherrard stand at the 1965 Spring Show.

McConnel had then become part of the British Wolsley Hughes Group. When Sherrards closed in the early 1980s, the McConnel business in Ireland was transferred to Kidd Farm Machinery, which was also part of the Wolsley Hughes Group. Kidd was then taken over by the Taarup organisation and in turn by Kverneland, and this brought the McConnel range to its present home on the Irish market at Kverneland Ireland.

Galway men Tom Burke and Michael Kelly plan to drive their two vintage tractors from Lorch-Ransel in Germany to Galway in aid of Temple Street Children’s Hospital during a three-week, 1,000-mile drive in July of this year. Michael is well-known for his involvement in the Dunmore Vintage Club and for this collection of German-built classic and vintage tractors.

Tom Burke will be driving his modified 1969 Massey Ferguson 35 tractor that has been fitted with a V8 diesel engine, while Michael Kelly will be taking his 1965 Deutz D8005 on the run.

The pair will start their journey at the Land Festival at Lorch Ransel Land Museum, northwest of Frankfurt, and plan to include a run on the Nurburgring (motorsports complex) in Germany en route to Belgium, France and England, with a stop at the London-Irish Vintage Rally and finishing in Galway. They have set up a Facebook page ‘‘Vintage Tractor Euro Road Trip 2016’’ and hope to get support for their novel and arduous tractor run.