A full dispersal sale of the Brian Thompson collection will be going under the hammer at Brattle Farm Agricultural Museum, Five Oak Lane, Staplehurst, in June. The auction will be conducted by Hobbs Parker Auctioneers LLP and will be both live and online with Marteye.ie
In the 1970s Brian Thompson, who had committed all of his energy to making a small 100 acre farm support his family for the previous 25 years, found that he had a little more time to pursue his interests. He bought two vintage cars locally for around £200 each, an Austin 12 and a Ford Model A, at the start of an obsession with saving and restoring historical machinery that he witnessed being lost every day to a general disinterest and a scrap industry hungry for old steel.
After a few more car restorations, Brian discovered, languishing in a bramble thicket where it had spent several decades, an early tractor which turned out to be a Maidstone-built Weeks Dungey, thought to be a 1913 Simplex. This was restored with the help of some of his talented engineering friends. Around this time, he and his wife Anita, a keen local historian, began collecting agricultural equipment and associated farming and rural household items that were destined for the bonfire or the scrap man.
Several more tractors were restored, including the International Junior that had been the only internal combustion engine- powered vehicle on the Channel Island of Sark. The Weeks Dungey tractor and the International Junior will be included in the auction that will be conducted by Hobbs Parker on Saturday 14 June, alongside several other tractors in the Brian Thompson collection.
Over the next 15 years the collection grew to such proportions that Brian bought, demolished and re-erected a Kent barn, part of the Frittenden Brickworks, that was painstakingly renovated in the farmyard. A beautiful display of all the couple’s treasures was installed and several years of museum open days and live demonstrations of farm work and country living ensued.
Sadly, in 1985 a straw barn fire consumed almost the entire collection, including all the old farm buildings. Local enthusiasts rallied around and helped with the enormous clean-up operation of charred wood and twisted metal. Remarkably, over the next few years the collection grew again with astonishing speed and, like the proverbial phoenix, the museum rose again.
Brian died in 2014 at the age of 84 after a long illness that had prevented him from working for some years. It is now time for all these museum exhibits to find new homes, and Hobbs Parker hopes these historical machines that have shaped our countryside over the past 200 years can be cherished and appreciated by new guardians.
