Horse Drawn Potato Digger.

Cultivation of the potatoes in Ireland began in the mid fifteen hundreds when it was introduced from South America by Sir Walter Raleigh, described among other things as 'Ireland's first potato farmer', Raleigh is said to have planted Ireland's first potatoes at Killua Castle in county Westmeath.

The potato was well suited to the Irish climate, within a comparatively short period of time potatoes were grown the length and breadth of the country. So abundant were the crops that many of the population, the poor in particular came to depend on them as their main food source. It is said that the the early 1800's agricultural labourer's consumed upwards of 12 lbs of potatoes a day and little else.

This dependence was to have a catastrophic effect on Ireland's population when in 1845 potato blight appeared in Ireland. The census of 1841 recorded the population as 8,175,124 by 1851 this had fallen during the Irish famine by death and emigration to 6,552,385.

Up until the industrial revolution all the potato crop would have been dug by spade, the potato digger illustrated above was to change all this, at least for the more prosperous farmers and estate owners. The machine was pulled by two horses, the large cast iron wheels drove the spinner at the back via a bevel gear, the knife or share seen on the ground in the illustration was set to cut through the ground at the bottom of the potato drill, this depth was set by the small wheel seen on the right of the picture, the spinner threw the soil and potatoes to the left of the machine looking from behind, the spinner could be engaged or disengaged at will by a simple dog clutch. People then gathered the exposed potato's into wicker baskets (Potato baskets) when a basket was full it was transferred into a hessian bag, which was then loaded into a cart to be taken to the farm yard.