GRAA 2025 Ploughing Match In Kent

Ploughing matches have been run for over a hundred years – they’re all about accuracy and straight line. It’s a competitive sport taken very seriously by all those involved with classes for vintage and modern day tractors alongside horse and steam powered versions.

I’d first heard of the competitions a couple of years ago and, being interested in anything unusual, thought it would be a good day out – and that’s exactly what it turned out to be.

There are four galleries of pictures at the bottom of this page.

GRAA Event

The Gravesend and Rochester Agricultural Association’s 174th Ploughing Match was held at Beluncle Farm in Hoo, Kent only a few miles from Rochester.

One area of the field had been turned into a showground for birds of prey and dog demonstrations with a second area for a horse gymkhana. Around this area there were craft exhibitions, trade stands and catering trailers.

But I was here for the ploughing match.

Never having been to one and living in central London, I had no idea what to expect. It was fantastic.

First up were the vintage tractors with their exhausts putt putting away. They may of been old, but they pulled their ploughs with ease guided by their driver’s expert eye.

Then the modern day machines started on their section. Those tractors are huge, handling their much larger ploughs with ease.

Two shire horse teams made pulling a plough back and forth look easy. The human operator guiding the ploughs was clearly straining every muscle they owned to keep things on the straight and narrow to leave behind a well formed furrow. It was hard work guiding the ploughing, turning the plough at the end of the run needed even more strength controlling the horses to turn the plough around.

The highlight for me though was the steam plough. A preserved steam traction engine was located at either end of the field. Under the boiler, between the front and rear axles was a capstan around which a steel wire about two inches thick was wound. That wire went about 250m across the field to the capstan underneath the second traction engine. Attached to the cable was the plough which was then dragged backwards and forwards across the field with the steam engines taking it in turn to pull. On the plough itself, oversized steering wheels allowed the operators to keep the ploughed furrows parallel.

Electricity Pylons

The ploughing field had huge electricity pylons passing overhead which I thought was going to make photography difficult, but in an unexpected turnaround they actually ended up featuring in one of my favourite photos from the day.

Photography Technique

Most of the pictures were taken with a 400mm zoom lens using the magnification to compress everything together and better tell the story of what was happening. In reality, a lot of the vehicles that seem to be close together in the pictures, were at least 20-30 metres apart.

The picture showing the vintage tractors lined up ready for the off probably covered a distance of 150 metres from foreground to background. Same goes for the steam powered plough, in some of those pictures the plough is at least 150m away from the traction engine pulling it.

The day of the match was pretty grey at times which made the photographs look a bit drab. A quick bit of computer magic and the photos look brighter.

And just to prove you don’t need fancy camera gear to get good pictures, the picture below was taken on my iPhone 14.