Believed to be at the rear of the Fyson family home, the Burrell is unidentified but believed to possibly be No 486. The picture dates from around 1885.

 
Alan Barnes unearths the history of a regional engineer and one-time traction engine manufacturer based among the agricultural community in the Cambridgeshire town of Soham. With thanks to Tony Brown for providing information and photographs from his archive collection.

Having only produced a recorded total of 17 traction engines it is unfortunate, although hardly surprising, that none of the engines produced by CJR Fyson & Son Ltd has managed to survive. The last of its engines was thought to have been cut up for scrap sometime in the 1950s.

Richard Fyson founded the company in 1848, trading under his own name and he took premises at Paddock Street in Soham. Initially the principal business was the building of windmills and a distinctive six-sailed windmill was built at the Paddock Street works where it stood for over 100 years – becoming a familiar and unique landmark in the town. This mill was a strange and rather unconventional structure made from ‘bits and pieces’ available in the yard, in fact the legs were made from the tubes of Cornish Type boilers. The windmill was tucked away at the back of the yard and was largely out of use by the 1920s, although it did remain in place for some time after. Richard Fyson, in his advertising, offered ‘Windmills Built in a Superior Manner’ featuring ‘Patent Sails made on a New and Improved Principle’ and ‘Steam engines, erected and applied to any kind of machinery’.

The surrounding area, being primarily farmland, provided a ready market and a strong demand for all types of agricultural machinery and hundreds of small windmills were produced by the concern. As well as conventional mills, the firm also produced drainage mills for use in the wet fenland areas to pump water from the maze of drainage ditches which criss-crossed the landscape. The water pumped from these drains would go into the main channels and rivers to be taken away from the farmland and out to sea. Without the use of such pumps the area would have soon returned to the boggy marshlands from which they had been reclaimed.

The demand for windmills increased as did the requirement for servicing and repairing existing machinery and the business began to prosper despite competition from Hunt Bros, another millwright in the town. Their premises were about half a mile distant on the opposite side of town.

Fyson were on the outskirts on the Bury St Edmunds side while Hunts were on the Cambridge side. Another milling business in the town was that of Clark and Butcher, which in 1876 purchased a mill and surrounding area which they had been leasing from the Dobede family. Even with plenty of competition, Fyson’s business developed and an element of diversification was introduced with company papers showing that as well as the manufacture of windmills there are records which reveal that by the 1860s they were also heavily involved in threshing contracts. A foundry had been added to the carpenters' shops where iron castings were made on site for the increasing variety of agricultural machinery which was being produced. Steam power was now beginning to replace wind power and the firm had been using portable engines and traction engines since the 1870s. Around 1891 the firm produced its first steam engine, its first and only portable engine and it was not until 1894 that the first Fyson steam traction engine was produced. Richard Fyson’s son, Charles John Richard Fyson, had taken over the business and the name of the firm was changed to CJR Fyson. Later it became CJR Fyson & Son when Charles’ son Richard Wallis Fyson took over the business...

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