This remarkable film from the Barnes Brothers shows how wheat was once harvested – using a combination of man, horse, steam and water-power

This Barnes Brothers film, which received a commendation from Amateur Cine World, shows how wheat was once harvested – with muscle and steam-power alone. We see heads of grain, in close-up, followed by a horse-drawn reaping machine working its way through a field of ripened wheat. The stacked sheaves are loaded onto a cart using pitchforks and taken to a threshing machine. The grain is sent to a water-powered mill while the straw is stacked into large haystacks.

This film offers a portrait of an agricultural world only partially touched by mechanisation. This traditionally labour-intensive industry was revolutionised during the 19th and 20th centuries with the gradual adoption of labour-saving machinery - including steam powered traction engines. However, even up to the 1930s, manual and horse drawn processes were still widely used to gather in the harvest. Seasonal workers were employed to support the permanent farmworkers and, as one can see in this film, horse and steam-powered equipment were all drafted in at harvest time, the busiest time of the farming year. The large water-mill featured in the film is located in Littlebourne, Kent.