Gascoignes (Reading)

Gascoignes (Reading) Ltd was established in 1927 at Coley by George H. Gascoigne, known to his workers as 'The Squire', the firm having first appeared in the Reading directories in 1926 at Castle Street. From 1932 to 1940 it was in Great Knollys Street, handy for the cattle market, and during the Second World War, when the shortage of farm labour helped the sale of milking machines, it moved to its own purpose-built factory in Berkeley Avenue, with a galvanising plant and electro-plating and paint-spraying departments. At the British Industries Fair of 1937 it showed as 'The Milking Machine Specialists' with complete auto-releaser and bucket-type plant; its 1950s address was Gascoigne House, Reading, telegrams 'Gascoignes, Reading'.

The Land Rover product is the Gascoignes Vacuum Power Set, leaflet L.R.231, received by the Automobile Association's technical library on 27 April 1965 and headed 'As approved by the Rover Company Limited for use with the Land-Rover', by which date the firm styled itself milking-machine manufacturers by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen. The vacuum pump unit is mounted on the front bumper of the Land Rover, secured by four bolts so that it can be readily detached, and driven from the front of the engine; the leaflet shows a Series IIA with the pump on the bumper milking a cow into a bucket unit in a field. Its uses were milking in the cattle lines at agricultural shows or as a field milker on the farm, supplying vacuum to small milking bails so that the Land Rover was tied up only for the duration of milking, creating the vacuum to empty slurry tanks where only low pressure was required, and any application needing a portable vacuum pump, such as vacuum sheep shearing or stand-by duty.

Gascoigne, Gush & Dent became famous around the world in the 1970s as makers of equipment for the dairy industry, and in the same decade the company merged with Melotte, a family firm founded in 1852, to form Gascoigne-Melotte, specialising in milking-machine design and development. Manufacturing continued in Reading for some twenty years after the war before the firm moved to the Isle of Wight; the Berkeley Avenue factory was demolished in 1987. The Gascoigne-Melotte name survives in the milking business, registered at Companies House as BouMatic Gascoigne Melotte UK Ltd (incorporated 17 December 2021) and formerly as Gascoigne Melotte Milking Solutions Ltd.