George Birch & Co. of Manchester, England, made, from the late 1800s  and into the early years of the 20th century, a range smaller machine tools including lathes, shapers, vertical slotters and a range of quite ordinary lathes and backgeared and plain horizontal milling machines. Although the majority of Birch machines might have been relatively prosaic - and sold primarily for use in ordinary shops - they also made a number of beautifully constructed and complex lathes for ornamental turning.
Typical of its era - circa 1890 to 1900 - the flat-belt drive horizontal milling machine shown below was offered with a decent specification: backgeared for slow speeds with greater torque (essential with flat-belt drive), power-feed to the table (with an unusual arrangement of the worm-and-wheel gearing on the end of the leadscrew, making the table assembly rather long), a tall, well-supported knee casting and (of doubtful benefit) tapered stems on the feed-screw shafts to take demountable crank handles. However, like all machine tools of its generation, the castings - being rather slender and over-elegant in design  - lacked rigidity and so would have limited the rates of metal removal possible.
If you have a Birch machine tool and would like to contribute photographs or technical details, the writer would be very interested to hear from you..