John Sproat
Located where Wilkinson’s now stands in Castle Douglas, in the late 19th and 20th century Wallace’s was a major manufacturer of Agricultural Engineering products. A fine example of Scottish Victorian enterprise.
Established in 1876 by brothers James & Robert Wallace, sons of Robert Wallace, an implement maker from Ayrshire, at its peak the Company employed between 60 and 70 people including turners, fitters, moulders and wheelwrights.
Wallace products were sold and used throughout the United Kingdom. They were also exported all over the world to Western Europe, Russia, South America, Australia and South Africa.
J & R Wallace were millwrights as well as implement makers. The range of implements that they supplied included reapers, binders, threshers, ploughs, fertiliser spreaders, cheese presses, grain bruisers and cake breakers. Some of their products were at the leading edge of technology at the time.
For example they were the first company to produce a successful, pulsating, milking machine. These were installed throughout Britain and fitters from the Company would be sent from Castle Douglas to set up equipment for customers.
One of the most successful machines ever built was a simple but highly effective mechanical manure distributor. The Company was awarded a Gold Medal for the design of this equipment at the Royal Agricultural Show in Newcastle in 1908.
The speaker John Sproat is related to the Wallace family and has had passed on to him a fine collection of images of the original Company buildings and some of its historic products. His presentation included many interesting images from this historically important collection which hopefully can be seen by other audiences and groups.
In addition samples from his collection of family pictures were used to reveal the family history aspects of the talk. These included some splendid Edwardian and Victorian family group photographs. There were also fine photographs of early motor vehicles with local number plates which would have been seen on Stewartry roads in the early 20th century.
The story of the decline of the Foundry mirrors that of so many engineering companies in Britain after the second world war. Competition from Europe and particularly newer emerging economies has made some kinds of manufacturing uneconomic.
For a while the company found a new role as an agency for other Engineering companies like Massey Ferguson but eventually the business became insolvent and closed.
The name of Wallace lives on as part of the industrial heritage of Dumfries and Galloway.
The next meeting of the society and the last of the season will be on Wednesday March 12 when John Pickin, formerly Museum Curator (Wigtownshire) D and G Arts and Museums service, will be talking about Bog bodies in Dumfries and Galloway.