His inventions significantly reduced the cost of ploughing farmland, and also enabled the drainage of previously uncultivated land in many parts of the world.

This was at the time of the Great Famine, and Irish agriculture depended on the potato crop whilst much of the land was uncultivated due to poor drainage.

The normal way to drain agricultural land was to use a mole plough to dig a subterranean drainage channel.

The mole is pointed at the front end, and as it moves through the soil, it leaves a horizontal channel into which porous drainage pipes can be laid.

However this required considerable tractive power, so that the size of the plough was limited by the strength of the teams of horses that pulled it.

Fowler returned to England and developed a horse-powered ploughing engine that would dig drainage channels.

The engine was driven by a team of horses that walked round a capstan, winding in a rope which was passed through a pulley securely anchored at the far end of the field.

When each length had been completed, the pulley would be moved to a new position, the rope would be let out and the plough would be taken to the far side of the field, ready to start the next channel.

Fowler demonstrated his new drainage plough at the Great Exhibition in 1851[3] and at the Royal Agricultural Society of England meeting at Gloucester in 1853, where he was awarded another silver medal.

[1] In his early career, Fowler had worked with steam engines and the logical progression was to apply this method of power to his drainage plough.

As the winch drew in the rope the mole plough was drawn across the field digging a drainage channel as it went.

The firm of Ransome and Sims built the new engine at its Orwell works at Ipswich, and on 10 April 1856 a trial was carried out at Nacton in which 1 acre was ploughed in an hour.

Despite the fact that the engine and plough coped well with the task, the effort of re-positioning the pulleys at either end of the field was too time-consuming.

The judges therefore decided not to award the prize, a bitter disappointment for Fowler who thought that the superior speed of his system over horse ploughing should have been taken into account.

However, Fowler did receive £200 awarded by the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, after a trial at Stirling that same year, despite the judges agreeing that the sole entrant had not exactly fulfilled the conditions the efforts were impressive.

[1] On 30 July 1857 Fowler married his third cousin (once removed), Elizabeth Lucy (1833–1881), fifth child of Joseph Pease, MP for South Durham.

Fowler inspired many industrialists, such as Julius Kemna (whom he cooperated with),[5] to build (and later improve) his revolutionary steam-based machines.

Fowler's ploughing sets were sold all over the world and were responsible for bringing land into production that was previously unable to be cultivated.

His brothers Robert, William and Barnard had joined him in the business he had founded and they continued to run the firm after his death.