The Old Lawnmower Club
Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

1830s Budding Model

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Clive1997

Collected this last week an extremely rare Budding Lawn Mower salesman sample, made in the early 1830s for demonstrating at shows & to retailers etc. This would have been used by J R & A Ransome, & Ransomes & May who were the main wholesalers/retailers in the East of England. In the 1830s & early 1840s this little mower would have no doubt been packed in a wooden crate & transported around the country in a stagecoach, the actual mowers travelling by canal. We have the full-size Budding Mower returning to our museum on 15th August (The oldest mower in the world) being one of only TWO original Budding mowers known to exist, the other being in the Science Museum, London. 

Details of where the recently discovered model can be seen will be published soon.

www.museumofgardening.co.uk

Forums

Mowing Wurzel Mon, 04/08/2025

In Mower terms.....This is the greatest discovery in almost hundred years!
(Since Ransome's Found The Oldest Surviving Buddings Patent Mower No. 1623 in the 1930's)

So we now have three original Buddings Patent John Ferrabee & Co. Mowers in the world.
(No. 1623 Owned by Ransomes No. 3157 Owned by the Science Museum being the other ones) And now this one....Albeit, Beer Bottle size perfection.

(For those not familiar the Original Buddings Patent design was from 1830 till the Registered Improvement No. 3074 by Ferrabee & Co. in 1852, when they put castors at the front)

I note the John Ferrabee & Co. Advert for the Buddings Patent, by Engraver Jabez Hare's workshop in The Gardeners Chronicle in 1849, ( as I have posted previously, and again below ) shows the rear roller as in the model, so likely Hare used this model, or one identical for their lithograph block. I note according to the internet that Jabez Hare was from and worked in Ipswich the Home of Ransomes!

I look forward to more info. on the models provenance.... Particularly the evidence it was used by Ransomes, as noted; Ransomes were Wholesale agent for John Ferrabee & Budding "During the life of the patent" (as per articles I have also posted)

London and the Eastern counties being the most affluent areas of the country and from Production figures in the Gardeners Chronicle & other publications, Ransomes sold around 1200-1500 of the Buddings Mowers, out of the "nearly 4000 Ferrabee & Co. had built. at the time No. 3074 the Registered Improvements came in Spring 1852. So Ransomes contributing around 37% of sales, through their well established sales network.

Mowing Wurzel Mon, 04/08/2025

One of the many Hare Lithographs in the Gardeners Chronicle for 1849....  Who can not say the model was "sitter" for the artist!