John Hobbs visits Mike Hynd, who currently owns the very interesting Aveling & Porter traction engine No 4255 of 1899 Queen Victoria – a convertible that was probably never converted – whilst attending an emotional reunion for the engine in July. Moreover, she’s about to get a new man in her life…

Home again: Aveling & Porter traction engine No 4255 of 1899 Queen Victoria rests outside the home of the Mounce family in Lifton on 15 July 2005. ALL: JOHN HOBBS, UNLESS STATED

Between the end of the 19th century and into the last decade of the 20th, the name Valentine Mounce (held by grandfather, father and son in succession) was a very familiar one in the village of Lifton on the Devon/Cornwall border.
The family were, amongst other things, threshing and general agricultural contractors, engineers, quarry owners and builders and I’d met father Valentine some years back, on behalf of Old Glory, to hear something of his long life in the village, which included such innovative matters as the generation of electricity and the introduction of electric lighting to local properties. He also recalled the days of his agricultural activities, and of his and his father’s involvement with steam threshing, which started, for grandfather Valentine, with a Brown & May portable.
In February 1899 grandfather Valentine, trading with a Mr Hayward as Mounce & Hayward, purchased a new 6hp overhead slide-valve agricultural compound locomotive, No 4255, from Aveling & Porter and named, perhaps not surprisingly, Queen Victoria in honour of the Queen’s Jubilee. Permission so to do, it is said, was sought from and granted by the ‘Palace’.
I learned that the two Valentines - Mr Hayward had departed the partnership – at one time owned eight threshing sets, and that all of the engines except one – No 4255 it is now clear – were eventually sold on or cut up in the yard, where, during a spring-clean at a much later date, Roger Mounce, great-grandson of grandfather Mounce, found a number of engine-related artefacts, including two Aveling ‘horses’.
No 4255 was purchased in the early 1950s by a Mr Barrett (Senior), of ‘Whitmore’, Albaston near Gunnislake, Cornwall, where the engine spent its last commercial days driving a racksaw producing coffin boards and creating firewood for the locals. When required, the engine was steamed out of its little shed and returned when the tasks had been completed. To protect the motion, Mr Barrett built a canopy to cover it all, but its construction was better suited to a pygmy than a fully-grown man!

No passing on this bridge, as the engine re-lives its old haunts.

That fully-grown man eventually turned out to be Mike Hynd who lived in the nearby village of Metherell, and who had for some time wanted to buy Queen Victoria. The question was asked of Mr Barrett several times, but while Mike was allowed to visit his yard when the engine was working, it was always indicated that it wasn’t for sale. Then one day, a call was taken from Mr Barrett by Mrs Hynd, asking if Mike would visit him, which, not surprisingly, he immediately did that evening. The exciting result was that in August 1970 Queen Victoria became Mike’s, along with the sawbench! At that time it was still a working engine, but it hadn’t been out on the public highway for at least 20 years. However that was about to change, for Len Barrett asked Mike if he would take the engine to Calstock Church for his niece’s wedding!
“We readily obliged,” Mike told me. “Queen Victoria serenaded the bride when she emerged from the church with her new husband, and the engine was then put on a low-loader kindly provided by Richard Sandercock of Dingles, and on the following Saturday she attended her first rally – the West of England. That was the first public appearance that she made.”
It was then that Mike discovered the inadequacies of Mr Barrett’s canopy in terms of its height and that the absence of lateral stays made it potentially unstable. He thus decided that when he set about the engine’s restoration – it was considered very much time-expired – the canopy would be removed, as it wasn’t an original feature. He’d also change the colour of the engine from what Mr Barrett had referred to as Burrell maroon to the original Aveling green.
What Mike has only just learned is that Mr Barrett senior had also owned Burrell No 2417, that was initially owned by Herbert Lean of Wadebridge, and had decided that he would apply that colour to Queen Victoria. Interestingly, No 2417 is also a convertible and acting on information provided by Derek Rayner, Old Glory’s Technical Editor, the current owner of that engine, Britannia, has been traced to a location north of Doncaster, and I look forward to meeting Mr Holt in due course, Mike Hynd having already done so. Who knows, a reunion of the two engines could well be a possibility!

End of the On-line article.
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