Abwood Tool & Engineering Co. Ltd. First of Abbey Wood, London S.E.2 and then Dardford in kent, were a company well known for their range of milling machine accessories and, in later years, fine-quality specialised grinding and other machines and machine-tool accessories. In the early 1920s they introduced a milling attachment, mounted on a 4.25" x 3" foot plate that was designed to mount on the bed of a small lathe. Although widely advertised as being especially suitable for the Drummond 3.5-inch, it was possible to adapt the accessory to fit almost any similar size of machine - only the base needing to be altered.
Instead of being the usual cheap and inefficient unit, this was a very well-engineered and heavy affair that that used shafts and gears instead of belts. A horizontal bar, held in a 3-jaw chuck (or fitted into the Morse taper spindle of the lathe), took the drive forwards to a pair of bevel gears that turned a long vertical shaft provided with a keyway. At the top the shaft passed through a bevel gear pair that turned the drive horizontally  - with a third pair of bevels arranged to drive the vertical cutter spindle. Like the post-WW2 and better known Rodney units, as the drive came from the lathe's headstock and passed through 1 : 1 gearing, the milling cutter had the same range of speeds as the lathe.
A coarse setting for the height of the head was provided by unlocking the front section of the unit and adjusting its position on the main casting - with a fine feed provided by a 1/2" x 10 t.p.i. threaded rod attached to the side of the spindle housing that gave a travel of about 2 inches. The distance between spindle centre line and the inside of the main casting was 7 inches and the maximum clearance between spindle nose and table the same. In 1930 the unit sold for seven guineas (another way of expressing £7 : 7s : 0d) and a considerable sum at the time.
As examples of this unit are very rare, if any reader has one the writer would be interested to know..