WGRA has written on this sale leaflet: “This is the time we gave up farming”. Which is a very meaningful comment.
I know this from my own studies (when I worked for Massey Ferguson in Coventry from 1970 to 1978) of the corresponding work which Harry Ferguson did in the field of farming itself (as opposed to the field of road transport). Harry Ferguson sought to provide a lightweigh tractor to replace the steam-powered monstrosities that were then used for ploughing and other farm tasks, and he came up with the ‘Little Grey Fergie’ tractor, which was relatively very light in weight yet could grip the soil and pull a plough much more effectively than the ‘monstrosities’ because the Fergie used the ‘downthrust’ caused by a plough mounted on a three-point triangulated mounting hitch, to apply downthrust to the tractor whereby its driving wheels gripped the soil as effectively as if it weighed many times more than it actually did.
Likewise in road transport, James Archer had previously overcome the limitations in speed of horse-drawn vehicles, by using them only for the first and last part of a removal, and using the raiway (which was much faster than road transport up to at least the 1920s) for the major part of the distance travelled. Even so, the requirements of a fleet of horse-drawn vehicles in terms of hay and other fodder for the horses, was very very considerable, compared with the relative simplicity of providing fuel for the fuel-tank of a conventional road-going vehicle, as we now know it.
Then, when, in the 1920s/30s/40s the speed of road transport began to catch up with the railways, it must have become clear that the day of the horse for transport purposes was coming to an end. And there was the associated ‘dividend’ that there would no longer be any need to grow and harvest and store the hay which horses needed for their life-work. Hence the farm sale on 01/10/1925 by Messrs Franklin & Jones, auctioneers.