The Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company

Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company was obliged to diversify into heating equipment then building materials.

Its name and business has continued, supplemented since 1982 by Ferguson Enterprises, a large American supplier of building materials.

The English business was founded by Frederick York Wolseley in London in 1889 and a company was incorporated there with a capital of £200,000 to better realise the potential of his sheep shearing invention patented in March 1877.

Herbert Austin, who had worked on the product's development in Melbourne Australia from 1887, was appointed its manager and received a share of its equity.

Following wide demonstrations in eastern Australia and New Zealand in 1887–1888, a woolshed in Louth, N.S.W., was set up with the machinery and was the first to complete a shearing with the machines.

[2] The Australian incorporation was wound up and the business's ownership transferred to the new London company in 1889 but operations were retained in Australia.

[1] During the early 1890s Austin studied Wolseley's shearing machinery in use on a large sheep station and patented several improvements.

By 1893, however, they were facing a crisis when it was discovered they had sold a large amount of defective machinery, brought about by the failure of local suppliers to meet the required specifications.

The first power source was a horse gin connected by belt and pulley and a carefully designed driveshaft to a handpiece held by the shearer.

As well as relieving the shearer's hand of the cutting effort, the machine clips the wool at its full length, which often doubles or triples its value.

This part is above the shearer's head, and a leather pipe, about an inch in diameter, incloses a piece of sheep gut, which gives the knife 1600 revolutions a minute.

It is just guided to any part, and goes round the ears the same as down the side; you can shear either very close, or can leave wool on by altering the comb.

Directors Secretary and offices —Hugh E Mcleod, Crown Court, Old Broad Street, London Agents The company is formed for the purpose of acquiring and working the patent rights in Great Britain .

[5] There is a Wolseley brand two-stand portable shearing plant in the collection of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.

[6] Manufactured in Birmingham, England, around 1930, the shearing plant is powered by a three horse-power single-cylinder petrol engine, mounted on a wooden trolley base with four cast iron wheels.

The plant, weighing 550 kg, was used on a sheep property named 'Emoh Ruo' in the Rockley-Black Springs area of New South Wales.