Tractor heritage, news and features

William Hugh Williams - Huw Teilia

Born on the family farm ‘Teilia’ in Cemaes Bay, Anglesey, Huw spent a lifetime in agriculture, and had been ploughing since he was a youngster in the 1930s. His first experiences of tilling the land was with horses, but it wasn’t long before Huw graduated to tractors and his fascination and love of the tractors of his early years was something that remained with him all of his days.

The story of Huw’s fascinating life, detailing the many changes in agriculture and machinery that he had witnessed, appeared over three articles in Tractor magazine, in issues 49, 50 and 51 (November and December 2007 and January 2008).

He recalled the excitement at having a go at driving a Fordson Model F as an enthusiastic nine-year-old boy, and his pride when as a teenage farm labourer, he was first trusted with the job of ploughing with his boss’s brand-new David Brown tractor. He also described an almost fatal accident that he had as a 16-year-old when he was run over by a Ferguson Brown tractor, which had spade lugs on the rear wheels. The rear wheels of the tractor went right over Huw, as did the disc plough that was behind it. The first doctor who attended Huw thought he was unlikely to survive, but survive he did, although the damage was extensive and Huw spent many months in hospital, he went on to make a full recovery and once out of hospital was back behind the wheel of a tractor within days.

Competing in his first ploughing match at the age of 16, using his boss’s tractor, Huw continued to enjoy, and remain successful at, competitive ploughing throughout his lifetime. He was one of the founder members of the Anglesey Vintage Ploughing Society, and would usually share transport to ploughing matches with Society chairman and friend Gwynn Jones. Gwynn says of Huw “He was a gentleman with a capital ‘G’, and his kind are becoming few and far between.”

A proud moment for Huw came in 2005 when, with his little grey Fergie, he won the Ferguson Class in the All Wales Ploughing Championships. Then in 2007, when in his early eighties, Huw became the first man outside Ireland to win the Ferguson Heritage Championships in Mullahead Ploughing Match, Ireland. Huw always ploughed on his beloved Fergie, and the fact that he’d bought this little tractor for just £50, and that his plough had been made up of various different parts of redundant Ferguson ploughs somehow made his success all the more special. As well as having won numerous firsts at ploughing matches on his Fergie, Huw also drove this tractor on various epic road runs, including one from Anglesey to Banner Lane, raising over the years some £12,000 for local charities.

In a moving tribute, his friends, the ploughmen of Anglesey, took Huw’s little grey Fergie to the church funeral service in the village of Amlwch on 9 February 2010, where it sat outside the church gates as though waiting for its owner. The Welsh minister himself, who conducted the service, recalled how many times over the years he had found himself following a long line of traffic through Anglesey, only to find Huw at the front on his little grey Fergie, raising a friendly hand at all who passed.

It was while planting potatoes as a young farm labourer that Huw met his beloved wife Joy, who was a Land Girl at the time. They married in 1950 and went on to have three children David, Mandy and Pam. Over the years Huw became a proud grandfather of eight, and a great grandad to 12. While agriculture was Huw’s main work, he also found time around that to work as a lorry driver, a train driver, a retained fireman, and he and Joy also dedicated any spare time they had to helping out with disabled children in their locality.

A kind, honest, modest and hardworking man, much loved by many, Huw will be sadly missed, not only of course by his family, but also by all those who regularly met up with him at the shows and ploughing matches of Britain.