Ploughing a new furrow: tractors a mainstay of early years

A man whose roots were from deep Cork farming stock, it is apt that Henry Ford’s new Irish factory became synonymous with tractor production during its first 15 years, writes John Dolan.

The first vehicle that wheeled off the Marina production line was a Fordson tractor, and they were manufactured there in two spells, between 1919 and 1922 and 1929 and 1933, when the production transferred to the Dagenham plant in England

Nearly 32,000 of the vehicles were built in Cork in total, and many are still going strong to this day. Indeed, the oldest working Fordson in Ireland today was made in the US in January, 1918, pre-dating the Irish operation.