Tony Atthill
The late Anthony George Maunsell Atthill was born into a well respected Norfolk family who once lived at Brandeston Hall in North Norfolk, a quiet, unassuming and intensely private individual, quite why he did not follow some of his relatives into the church, the law, engineering or some other profession is not clear. He and his wife Edna lived quietly in a small suburban bungalow and Tony worked at the local hospital as a general maintenance engineer, despite being an extremely accomplished precision engineer and prolific builder of small stationary steam engines, all constructed in his tiny 'garden shed' workshop. I have records of at least thirty (and there were probably more) including three quite large horizontal singles built during the early 1960's, two of which are illustrated here. I do not think that he ever exhibited any of his engines but did describe the building of this particular engine in the Model Engineer.
This engine has four bar crosshead guides and drives a 110 volt generator
This engine has two bar crosshead guides,
A third had a bored 'tunnel' crosshead guide, the first two are in a private collection in Norfolk (no not mine !), the third went down to Essex and has since disappeared from view, should anyone know its current whereabouts I would be delighted to hear about it.
These engines, which were loosely based on a type built by Savages of Kings Lynn have a 15 inch diameter x 2 1/4" face flywheel, cylinder 2 1/2" bore by 4 " stroke, the bedplates being 28" long by 9" wide and weighing 30 lb., the connecting rod is 12" between centres and the crankshafts were flame cut from 1 3/8" thick steel plate before turning (as all turning on Tony's engines was) on the 5" centre height World War 1 Drummond foot treadled lathe now resident at the Old Engine House.
Fortunately, Tony's patterns for these engines are still around (although now owned by someone else) I hope one day to 'borrow' these, have a set of castings poured and then build one myself.
These and other engines were sold when Tony suffered a severe illness from which it was expected he would not recover - happily he did and soon started building more engines although he subsequently regretted the sale of the larger engines.
I came to know him in his later years through a happy co-incidence and a visit to his workshop was always fascinating and educational, the engines would be hauled out and even when into his eighties he was busy most days making modifications to them, perhaps changing governor parameters, eccentrics. valves etc. to see what effect it had.
This was his experimental engine - a 2" bore by 2" stroke horizontal which bears the marks of many modifications and experiments over the years.
In the early 1990's illness struck again and he was banned using the old Drummond treadle lathe - this ban was not well received but finally accepted - I was informed one day during a visit that I was 'buying' the lathe - so that it could continue to be used to build engines.
While not recovering his strength or agility, his mind remained razor sharp and there were several discussions on 'Norwich' engine building practice while I was restoring the first Riches and Watts from a pile of scrap, As he would not travel to visit us I ended up taking the engine round on a trailer so that he could actually see it completed, inevitably quite a discussion developed on why the makers had done this, made that sort of gland, put a web in this part of the casting or why the feedpump was originally at a 45 degree angle to the crankshaft.
Later visits to Tony often included discussing what would eventually become of his collection, he had tried to get a couple of museums interested but with no success, he discussed putting them into various auctions or just leaving the problem for his executors, it was clear that the subject was starting to cause him concern as he wanted them together, looked after and steamed. On a couple of occasions I had said that that I would love to buy them eventually and could find room for them in the engine room to cheer him up, but had not expected anything of the sort ever to happen (although I had thought I might end up bidding for one or two at an auction one day) Then, one day when I had called in to borrow a die I was hit with the same situation as had happened some years previously with the lathe 'I know you will look after them so you are going to buy my engines' - after some further discussion where I expected that he would change his mind, a deal was eventually agreed, including that he could have any of them back that took his fancy as time passed or his health improved and that I would keep them together as a collection.
The day they were transferred we arranged them out in Tony's yard for some photos to be taken, it took a lot of persuasion from both Edna and myself for their builder to agree to be included but here he is.
Finding space to display and the infrastructure to steam them all was actually more of a problem than I had anticipated but eventually a scheme was worked out, serious quantities of copper pipe, stop valves and other plumbing fittings were acquired or made and all assembled - it took almost a year to pipe them up, photos of key stages were taken back to Tony so that he could see the progress and his comments were largely complimentary. Unfortunately, even with the inducement of eventually meeting one of his long time 'heroes' - Ronald H Clark, we could not persuade Tony to visit, so that he never saw them all steaming together in their new home.
Then, in what turned out to be his last year, illness struck again, this time requiring hospital and then residential care, after a struggle against what had been diagnosed as Parkinsons Disease which left him unable to control his limbs or in the later stages even his speech, Tony left us to meet the 'Great Engineer' at the age of 87 - on October 15th 1998 - two months short of his and Edna's Diamond Wedding.
I sincerely hope he is now rubbing shoulders with his various engineering heroes and that he finally has the answers from them to a number of unresolved technical questions on which he pondered long and hard during his life - such as how the inner rings of Savages annular compound engine low pressure piston sealed or why Pickering governor springs had three leaves.
Having no children to carry on his work, at the cost of seeing them taken away, he ensured by placing the engines in our care that his collection would remain together and be looked after and steamed into the future.
The idea of having something like this webpage dedicated to him would have been altogether far too much fuss and bother - sorry about that Tony - your skills deserved far more recognition than you received during your lifetime, It was a great pleasure to have known you - I'm going to miss you old friend.