The Pagefield ‘Model N’ subsidy lorry was only built in small numbers, served a hard life during the Great War and with a chassis prone to cracking it was thought that there were no survivors, until one turned up
Of all the British-built lorries which served during World War One, the Pagefield is probably the least well known.
Although the army lorry clearly showed the name Pagefield on the radiator top tank it was manufactured by the company of Walker Brothers which named the lorry after its Pagefield ironworks (named after the land it was built on ‘Page’s Fields’) in the northern industrial town of Wigan.
John Walker set up an engineering business in 1866 with his brother Thomas joining him three years later and his other brother Edwin shortly after that. Initially, it specialised in manufacturing mining machinery (primarily fans and compressors) but diversified into industrial railway locomotives in 1890. In 1904 it assembled two automobiles, but Edwin thought that there was too much competition to make this a success and suggested that the company’s future should be directed at the construction of commercial vehicles instead.
In 1907 it sold its first commercial vehicle which was powered by a 18bhp…
