THIS week in Down Memory Lane we look at harvest time in Thurrock 60 years ago.

The 1953 Grays & Tilbury Gazette, which I have used extensively this year to record the floods in Tilbury and the Thurrock-wide Queen’s coronation events, also recorded photographically activities around the local farm.

I was reminded about this as I drove to the museum passing a field near Horndon, where the harvest was underway with two huge combine harvesters and equally large tractor and trailers transporting the grain back to the silos for storage.

My featured photograph, taken in August 1953, shows the latest model of combine harvester being used on Mr Wilson’s farm at St Clere’s Hall in Stanford (now the golf course).

I guess it is some four times smaller than today’s version, has no cab (or air conditioning) and limited grain store on board.

One remarkable difference is that straw bales are rarely rectangular, as today they seem to have evolved in to rolls.

Harvest time is perhaps the most arduous part of the farming year, but hopefully has its benefit in a good harvest and then the farmers and their workers can settle down to celebrate by attending the annual Orsett Show.

This year the show falls on Saturday, September 7, and I hope you will all attend and enjoy the mixture of farming displays, horse shows, arts and crafts and all the other side events.

Thurrock Museum and the other heritage groups in Thurrock will be showing off their activities and trying to encourage you to join in, helping to preserve Thurrock’s rich and unique heritage.