Cake Mill "Cattle Cake Breaker" - Made by Andrew Handyside Ltd of Derby.

Andrew Handyside of Derby didn't just make bridges, fountains, post boxes and railway station roofs, they also made some rather unusual farm machinery as you can see here. This is the first time Ive actually seen a real one rather than in their brochures.

This item is a Cake Mill or "Cattle Cake Breaker" and was used on farms to break up Oilcake which comes in hard large slabs and needs to be broken up for cattle feed.

I would like to thank Ken Heathcote for getting in touch about this item and for sending me photographs after he had restored it. 

Here are four photographs showing the cake mill in its restored state.
Looking into this it would appear that Bentall and Co of Heybridge also made Cake Mills around this time. In 1876 there were 33 Oil and Cake Merchants in Hull, 1954 directory listed five Seed Crushers & Cattle Cake Manufacturers.

Feel free to link to my blog post about this item.

Thanks

Andy Savage