Marshall, Sons & Co of Gainsborough had produced steam equipment from early days. They went on to design and build the single cylinder Field Marshall tractor, which showed its pedigree - solidly built and with an unrivalled economy. They then went on to build multi-cylinder tractors, but these were nowhere like as popular as the original. The single-cylinders are ever-popular at ploughing matches and vintage shows, with their distinctive exhaust note audible from a considerable distance.

In the meantime, having been successful builders of threshing equipment since 1849, they more or less stuck driving wheels and a gearbox under the front end, added a header unit and two Coventry Climax engines and redirected the feed. This was after  a stint building trailer combines to produce the Grain Marshall Combine Harvester "The Silver Queens". The header on the self-propelled that I encountered was adjusted for height by a hand-operated winch through a steel hawser and counter-balance weights. I was reminded of all this by an article that appeared in the September 2007 edition of "Old Tractor".