Salopian-Kenneth Hudson & Son

Salopian Engineers was founded in 1926 at Prees, near Whitchurch in north Shropshire, became a private company in 1940, and by 1954 was listed at Prees as a maker of a wide range of servicing equipment for aircraft as well as farm machinery; adverts survive from 1938, 1945, 1947 and 1950. The National Archives records Salopian Kenneth Hudson Ltd, agricultural implement manufacturers, in the Market Drayton district of Shropshire with papers dating from 1944 to 1968, held at Warwick University's Modern Records Centre among the Rubery Owen archives, and The Times of 9 October 1963 shows both Salopian Engineers and Salopian Kenneth Hudson within Rubery, Owen & Co.; the firm's leaflets give its telegraphic address for export enquiries as 'Owenorgex, London', the Owen Organisation's Kent House office at Oxford Circus.

The Land Rover products are the manure spreaders. A four-page S.K.H. & Son leaflet printed in May 1958, headed 'Salopian Manure Spreaders, as approved by the Rover Co. Ltd for use with the Land-Rover', shows a Series Land Rover coupled to the spreader and gives the address as Prees, Whitchurch, Shropshire, telephone Prees 331-5, telegrams 'Implements-Prees'. The Evenspreader, power-driven model No. 1 of approximately 2 tons capacity, takes the drive from the Land Rover's rear power take-off through a telescopic shaft with universal joints at either end and a shear safety device to a floating main shaft, then through hardened bevel gears in an oil-bath gearbox to a conveyor of two malleable link chains with pressed-steel slats at 12-inch intervals and two cutting barrels that throw the manure onto pressed-steel distributor blades under an adjustable hood, with three spreading rates as standard; the machine is 17 ft 4 in long, 5 ft 6 in wide and 5 ft 7 in high and weighs 2,324 lb, and was supplied with universal coupling 01-503-035 splined for the Land Rover's 1⅜-inch PTO shaft, alternatives suiting Fordson, David Brown, International, Marshall and Ferguson tractors. The Land Rover needed the rear power take-off unit and towing equipment with the eight-holed plate. For the farmer without a PTO and for the smaller farm, the land-driven Quickspreader weighed 15 cwt, carried 25-30 cwt and drove its distributing mechanism from its heavy-tread pneumatic tyres on self-aligning hubs, needing only the Land Rover's towing equipment.

SKH also held the British agencies for Huard, New Idea and PZ farm machinery; the price of the PZ Haybob fell by £200 in 1979 when the agency was lost. The firm was unconnected with Salop Trailers of Shrewsbury. When and how S.K.H. & Son ceased trading has not been established from the sources fetched for this entry.