The story of this engine starts around 1913 when the engine was manufactured by Petters Ltd of Yeovil and supplied new to the agricultural agents - Archibald & Robert Brown of Colinsburgh in Fife, East Scotland. It is not known who the engine was eventually sold to and what duties it performed save to say it is likely to have been installed on a base or plinth and belted up to drive agricultural machinery such as a mill or a water pump. Given the condition of the original paintwork it is assumed that this engine spent most of its working life indoors and therefore was unlikely to have been a portable engine mounted on a trolley. Unfortunately no further history is known until the mid 70's when the engine was discovered in Ayrshire by the previous owner and recovered for preservation. It is still unknown how the engine ended up in Ayrshire, having originally been sold in Fife, neither do we know what it was finally used to drive. We acquired the engine in 1999 purely by chance through a friend pointing out an advert in the local free-ads paper for a 'Petter Oil Engine'. On enquiring further we discovered the engine was not the usual vertical two-stroke 'M' type but an open crank engine with twin flyhweels in need of restoration. Even more surprising was that the engine was located within a few miles of us and as such arrangements were quickly made to view and purchase the engine. Collection followed the next day with the main parts being loaded in the trailer and the various boxed small parts being loaded in the car. The following thumbnails show the engine when first viewed, half jammed under a bench but encouragingly near a stove which would have kept dampness at bay. Note the general condition of the paintwork, lining and transfer.
Having established the engine had been supplied by A & R Brown of Colinsburgh we were keen to find out more information about the engine's history. A trip to Fife in April 2002 gave me the opportunity to locate the original premises of A & R Brown in Collinsburgh. In addition to this, various enquiries were made to Fife Council, The National Archives of Scotland and St Andrews University Library to try and discover more about A & R Brown. As expected, little information was available however, unknown to us at the time one of our letters was eventually passed on to the Librarian at Colinsburgh who's husband had lived in Colinsburgh all his life. As a result a letter arrived out of the blue which provided some interesting information relating to the history of A & R Brown. They were still in operation in the 1940's as a threshing contractor and also ran a machine shop with heavy lathes and milling machines run from belt driven line shafts. Later, in the 1950's A & R Brown was run by a William Brown who was a relative of the original A & R Brown and the business focused more on carrying out repairs to cars and (no doubt common for the period) petrol pumps for filling stations. Research continues into the history of A & R Brown and we hope to make further enquiries with local libraries in the area who hold newspaper archives which may have trade adverts or information on A & R Brown. We will update this page as more information is uncovered.
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