If you wander past St Paul’s Cathedral today you might be in for a bit of a surprise, as there is display of rather large farming equipment on the cobbled stone forecourt.
Some large tractors and ploughing equipment – but the undeniable star of the display is the combine harvester. When I was there, a lady wandered over to the Trustee of the farming charity to ask what it is. This is why the display is there – to raise awareness of the farming industry in otherwise often uninformed Londoners.
As big as the Combine Harvester looks to us, it is actually quite small by farming standards, being a mere 24 foot wide. Most are closer to 40 foot wide – but that wouldn’t have fitted into the space here.
The display, including stalls by some of the farming associations, has been set up by The Addington Fund. Some live animals are from the Surrey Docks city farm which would normally to be found in Rotherhithe and seemed to be tolerating their excursion into the city.
It’s a smallish display in terms of things to see, but even those of use who venture past the M25 on occasions will rarely get a chance to be quite so close to these agricultural leviathans.
The display is due to remain there until 8pm tonight, although the farmers will all disappear inside the Cathedral for evensong at 5pm.
I saw these travel along Piccadilly early Tuesday evening,15th January. They were notable in that they were large, on transporters, rather clean for farm machines and in Piccadilly but they were obviously trying to keep together for they went through a red light.