Hello John I have an illustration of a man using a breast plough, described as "a large spade for removing turf, having a cross piece pushed from the breast". The drawing is tiny, less than an inch square, and faint with no detail of the implement itself, but you can see how it was pushed. I can scan and send you the page if you would like it, but as you have already seen the painting you already know what it looks like. My little picture comes from an illustrated dictionary edited by the great Arthur Mee, entitled "I See All" which was issued in the 1920s in periodical - I think fortnghtly - sections. My late mother-in-law collected them all as a teaching aid, containing 'a hundred thousand pictures', and had them bound into three large volumes. It's surprising how often I've used these books since I started on the family history trail. Cheers Lee Perth Oz -----Original Message----- From: john stinchcombe [mailto:johnst@waitrose.com] Sent: Monday, 4 April 2005 7:14 PM To: ENG-GLO-HAWKESBURY-L@rootsweb.com Subject: A Digression Hello Folks, Our local lib has a book, Recording Britain, Mellor,Saunders,Wright,1990 describing a project to provide work for artists in early stages of WW2. An item in it which has puzzled me is a painting by A.S.Hartrick of Breast Plough at Tresham--he had lived there for c10 yrs around 1900. In his autobiog A Painters Pilgrimage,1939,he describes life in Edwardian Cotswolds and says he bought the Tresham plough and presented it to the Horniman Museum at Forest Hill, S London. Now I went to the Horniman and asked what they knew about it--young archivist blushed a little and said she would look into it, but heard no more. It may be tucked away in a warehouse of reserve stock,rarely visited,but was discouraged from pursuing this further. Massingham and Hennell,Country Relics,1939 discuss the use of this manually operated wooden implement for cleaning light land of stubble and weeds but have never been able to conjure up image of it going on in our domain--the real surprise is an implication that it went on into early 20c when we think of cultivation by horse about to give way to tractor Any thoughts would be welcome,and apologies if I've asked about it before! ps will return to issue of "how many Thos and Nicholas do we have" when present wave of worries is burnt out--my own line certainly has a couple of points where we have to take Options A or B,without a definitive answer, and I have to rest with that as a reality. bye js ______________________________