Draft:John Rastrick

John Rastrick was born in Morpeth, Northumberland in 1738 and continued to live in the town for most of his life.  His father and grandfather had been millwrights in the town since moving from Yorkshire in 1688. On completion of an apprenticeship in 1764, he became a member of the Worshipful Company of House-Carpenters and Millwrights.^[2] In 1771 he patented an insulated and water-cooled butter churn, which he marketed as the 'Imperial barrel-churn'^[2] and he established a manufacturing business to produce them and other milling equipment.^[3]

From around 1785 he made his name by building and installing mechanical threshing machines driven by a horse gin. These came into widespread use from Perth to Lincolnshire, and the remains of Rastrick horse gins are still evident at a large number of farms in area.  They were also made under licence by other manufacturers, notably in Bedfordshire, Dorset and Shropshire. Rastrick complained in a letter to the Duke of Bedford that inferior workmanship and poor installation was bringing his name into disrepute.  In 1797 he was taken to court by Scots engineer Andrew Meikle, who had patented a similar device at about the same time that Rastrick started selling them. Rastrick claimed that the design had originated with a Mr Ilderton of Alnwick who had supplied scale models to both Meikle and himself, though he had substantially improved upon it.  Meikle stated his design was based upon a model which was sent to him by Sir Francis Kinloch of Gilmerton, who had based his model on a machine he had seen erected by a Mr. Smart in 1772 at Wark, near Morpeth.  The court found in Rastrick’s favour and Meikle’s patent was quashed.  Thomas Jefferson, US 'founding father', sent to England for a ‘Meikle thrashing machine’ but it was a Rastrick-built machine that was sent.

In 1830 there were widespread riots in rural areas of the country against the reduction in work that was a result of mechanisation.  Rastrick thrashing machines were often the focus of the anger and many were destroyed by rioting agricultural workers.

By 1790 Rastrick had a second home in Charing Cross, London and he advertised^[4] from that address 'Washing Machines, Steam Engines, Machines for Threshing Corn etc, ... the construction and installation of weaving machines, machines for brewing, hydraulic pumps, saw mills and windmills’. Later he was described as an architect and designed the iron Sunderland Bridge over the River Wear^[2] and one of the Longstones Lighthouses on the Farne islands. He was well known to the artist, Thomas Bewick of whom it was written^[5] “Bewick had a soft spot for eccentrics, like the local inventor John Rastrick, a mechanical genius who talked constantly about all his ideas, with the result that they were constantly pirated."

Rastrick died in Morpeth on 8 June 1826^[2] and was buried in St Mary’s Churchyard in the town On the sale of his workshops in the town after his death it was recorded that there were the parts of many various machines on the premises and also a working steam-powered cornmill. He left his estate to his three daughters from his first marriage to Catherine Reed and his three sons and three daughters from his second marriage to Mary Urpeth. His eldest son, John Urpeth Rastrick, was to follow his father's career as a pioneering engineer.^[6]