Marshall, Sons & Co.

In 1848 William Marshall bought the premises of millwright William Garland and Son at Back Street Foundry in Gainsborough. William began business here, before purchasing the first acre and a half of land on Beaumont Street some years later. This was the beginning of the Britannia Iron Works. In 1857 his son James Marshall become a partner and the company name was changed to William Marshall and Son. In 1861 another son, Henry Dickinson Marshall, became a partner. William Marshall died in 1861 and his two sons continued the business. It was incorporated as a limited company in 1862.

Before WW1 the workforce was over 4000, but by the mid 1930s this had fallen to less than 1000, and in October 1935 Thomas W. Ward Ltd purchased the entire assets of Marshall, Sons & Co Ltd. In January 1947 it was reported that Marshall had acquired John Fowler and Company (Leeds) Ltd. which was of similar size and had a highly mechanised foundry at Sprotbrough which was built in 1943 as part of the war effort to make track links for tanks. The two companies merged their activities to some extent and initially products were marketed under the Fowler-Marshall brand, but John Fowler and Co (Leeds) retained its identity and operated as a subsidiary company. By 1970 the two companies had been combined to form Marshall Fowler Limited.

In 1974 the Fowler works in Leeds was closed, and all activity concentrated at Gainsborough, and in 1975 T.W.Ward Ltd sold Marshall to British Leyland, who merged it with their Aveling-Barford products to form Aveling-Marshall, who made tracked crawlers and wheeled loaders. However British Leyland decided to sell off non-core businesses in 1979 and the Marshall part of British Leyland Special Products Division was sold to businessman Charles Nickerson, owner of Marshall, Son & Co. He produced crawlers under the Track Marshall Ltd name, and in 1982 acquired the British Leyland tractor business. He moved tractor assembly from Bathgate, Scotland to Gainsborough where he built tractors under the Marshall name. This deal was conditional on him sourcing engine and other parts from the Bathgate factory for a minimum of 3 years.

In 1986 the Marshall company changed ownership before becoming owned by Bentall Simplex who moved tractor production from Gainsborough to their 25 acre factory at Scunthorpe. Under Bentall Simplex Marshall tractors were increasingly fitted with Perkins engines. By 1989 a wide range of tractors were in production from 22hp to 125hp, plus they had a large spare parts business for the 120,000 Nuffield, Leyland and Marshall tractors around the world. This wide range of tractors largely came about by importing Steyr tractors and marketing them under the Marshall brand. The Track Marshall business was also sold in 1986, to a former sales director, Hubert Flatters. He saved the business but unfortunately died in 1987. The business was sold by his family in 1990 to Tom Walkinshaw's TWR Group, who focussed on the production of the rubber-tracked TM200. Track Marshall production continued until 1998, after which the business was sold to the Sales Director Tony Leighton and thereafter the company focussed on the supply of spare parts.

There is now a shopping centre (Marshall's Yard) standing on part of the former Britannia Iron Works site.

Steam engines

Marshall's produced large numbers of steam traction engines, steam rollers, portable engines and agricultural machinery of all types. Among British manufactures, Marshall were second only to Aveling and Porter in terms of the number of steam rollers they produced. In 1923 the company started selling tandem rollers.

Marshall also made at least one standard gauge railway locomotive, with works number 6402 being supplied to Pepper & Son Ltd chalk pits at Amberley in Sussex in 1878. It was scrapped in 1959.

Tractors

In 1900 they started designing internal combustion-engined tractors to be called the Colonials, with a power of 16 to 32 hp (not comparable to modern hp) for the export market to replace steam engines, selling 300+ by 1914. In 1928 they started to develop a tractor similar to the Lanz Bulldog from Germany. They launched the 15/30 (Model E) in 1930, followed by the 12/20 which became the Model M in 1938; this then developed into the Field-Marshall in 1944. Production of the Field Marshall continued until 1957.

A small number of MP4 and MP 6 tractors were produced after the Field Marshall, but tractor production effectively ceased until 1982, when Charles Nickerson bought the production rights to the Leyland tractors range, producing them at Gainsborough (although using engines and parts from Leyland) and selling them under the Marshall name. Initially successful, the venture failed to generate enough capital to fund the successful development of new models and the company began to lose its market share.