The Flying Horse was a former 17th century coaching inn, however as I researched through census forms, I found that although it was once a coaching inn, only builders, carpenters, blacksmiths, and various other trades were mentioned living there.

There is a sign, "Walter A. Wood, Harvesting Machines" My assumption is that those who lived and worked here, either sold or repaired these machines for the local farmers. Especially as Richard John Caswell who may have lived or worked here in 1911, was a Farrier & Blacksmith, and Builder.

Walter A. Wood, Ltd. Co. was established in Horsham, Sussex, to get around the tariffs, but that firm was later sold to English interests in an effort to raise cash to support the U.S. firm.

Another receiver was named in 1923, but it was too late and the company was dismantled and sold off in 1924. Ironically, the English firm, Walter A. Wood, Ltd., continued and had great success furnishing equipment to English farmers during World War II and beyond. One source claims that Massey-Ferguson bought W.A. Wood, Ltd. during the 1980s, but was unable to be verified.

Upon Wood’s death in 1892, a Mr. E. Oliver of the great farm machinery firm, Ruston, Proctor & Co. of Lincoln, England, wrote: “For one who has spent a life so long and so active in the forefront of mechanical enterprise, and whose labors have produced signal benefit to agriculture, the world must cherish an unfading remembrance.” But in today’s fast-paced world, hardly anything or anyone is remembered beyond the revelation of the “next big thing”!

Walter A. Wood was an American who produced many of the first Harvesting Machines. Wood was born in October 1815, in Mason, New Hampshire, and died of pneumonia in January 1892.

Walter A. Wood 1815 -1892

 ©peh