ALL industries are constantly evolving as markets alter, grow and disappear, but few have seen the constant change and upheaval that has been a feature of agriculture over the last century.

From the mechanisation of the early 20th century, to the battle to feed the nation during two world wars, to the more recent struggles of BSE and foot-and-mouth disease, farming has had more than its fair share of ups and downs.

One business that has managed to survive the turbulence is agricultural engineering firm, J Parlour and Son, based at South Otterington, near Northallerton, which is celebrating 100 years of trading this year.

The founder of the company, John Parlour senior, was born into a farming family at Diamond Hill Farm, Patrick Brompton, in 1883. He took an apprenticeship with William Britton, a blacksmith, farrier and engineer of Winston, near Barnard Castle.

Mr Britton made horse implements, harrows, scrufflers, rollers, ploughs and cart ironwork for firms such as Teasdales of Darlington and Blakeborough and Rhodes of Stockton, in the days when tractors had been invented but could not compete with horses.

When John Parlour came to the end of his apprenticeship, he set up in business at Yarm with the help of Mr Britton.

He was in competition with seven other blacksmiths, but was at an instant advantage because he could make horse implements, while none of the others could.

Mr Parlour managed to win a contract to shoe all the horses for the local vinegar factory.

He did not drink or smoke and worked from dawn until dusk.

In 1907 he was able to obtain the forge at South Otterington from Thomas Sadler of Dromonby House, Great Broughton.

Working through the First World War, he supplied horse implements to Teasdales and Bushells of York.

After the war he was able to buy Austin and Ford tractors to cultivate estate farms when estates were being sold off because of death duties, but the recession of the late 1920s finished off tractor farming for the time being and most of the farmers went back to horses. Mr Parlour's tractors had to go.

By the early 1930s, he was well known as a master farrier, having won numerous local horse-shoeing competition. He also won a gold medal when the amalgamated Royal Show and Yorkshire Show was held at Harrogate.

In 1938, Mr Parlour senior was joined in the business by his son, Jack. At this time the company had a contract with Thornton Stud at Thornton le Street and shod the famous racehorse and stallion, Hyperion.

The pair would sometimes dress the feet of 20 mares and 20 foals in one day.

At the start of the Second World War, there were only about four 20-year-old tractors within a five-mile radius of South Otterington, but as the war took hold, tractors began to trickle on to farms, mainly American models with drawbars made by Ford, John Deere, Massey Harris, International, Case, Minneapolis Moline and Wallace.

Jack Parlour, now in his mid-eighties, said: "By this time at the forge we had oxyacetylene and electric stick welders which were worth their weight in gold to weld broken parts for binders and mowers, as parts were very scarce for implements. A lot were 20 years old and over.

"The end of the Second World War altered the whole concept of farm mechanisation - three-point linkage and hydraulic rams, combines, balers, manure spreaders and rotavators were all introduced.

"Most of the working farm horses were sent to France, Holland and Belgium to help feed the starving millions.

"We were converting trailer ploughs too and other implements to fit on three-point linkage, improving new harrows on to linkage and later to hydraulic folding.

"We had agencies for David Brown, Standen, Lister, Teagle and Howard as most dealers had."

By 1950, the workshop at the forge in South Otterington had been extended and the company was contracted to make two pairs of wrought iron gates for Northallerton Grammar School as a memorial for former students who died in the Second World War.

The gates cost £295 to make and used one ton of iron.

The company ceased all farrier work in 1956. Between the late 1950s and 1980s the business manufactured a large number of Parlour Purple Harrows, which were fully mounted and hydraulic folding, measuring from 16ft up to 36ft. They were sold to dealers and farmers across North Yorkshire.

By the 1990s they were also hiring out farm machinery, including ploughs, straw choppers, harrows, subsoilers, trailers, discs and slurry tankers.

A more spacious workshop was built in 1993 and the company started to use MIG welding and plasma cutting.

John Parlour served the business for 62 years until his death in 1969.

His son, Jack, and his wife, Eileen, retired in 2004 with a total of 128 years' work between them. They will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in August.

The business is now run by their son, John S Parlour, their son-in-law Nigel Harker, and grandson Sven.

Jack Parlour believes the continued success of the business is down to its ability to change to meet the needs of the industry.

"When I left school in 1938 people were saying blacksmiths had no future, but I just kept going," he said. "Wrought iron is coming back into fashion now for gardens and such like, but most of it is rubbish.

"I look at it nowadays and I think it is mostly a good design spoiled."

He said the growing emphasis on organic produce and traceability was a return to how farming was in the days before tractors.

"Now we are looking forward to new technology coming into farming in the way of organics, biodiesel, ethanol petrol and the population using home-produced food, saving thousands of food miles.

"Farmers are once again able to obtain their power from fuel grown on their own farms, same as farmers said after the First World War, when asked why they didn't want tractors - "We would mebbe have yan if we could run it on hay, oats and turnips."