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

Happy Birthday Lawnmower

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stonethemows

The 18th. May is a very important day in lawnmower history. This day in 1830 marks the partnership of Edwin Beard Budding and John Ferrabee who paid for the development and obtained the Patent for Budding's ' Machine for cropping or shearing grass plats &c. '

It might therefore be considered to be the official Birthday of the lawnmower.

One of the drawings from the Patent application

A later illustration

 

 

Photographs published in The Engineer about 1930 showing a Ransomes machine built under licence

Well I had to get this in didn't I; my replica with experimental grassbox

Forums

Messorestore Tue, 18/05/2021

Happy Birthday indeed. I love your replica. I'm not jealous , envious, deflated, wanting or have the green eyed monster at all, much, little, much, not at all ! 

John.Sutherland Tue, 18/05/2021

There is not a lot I can say other than it is a fabulous bit of engineering, clearly someone has a deep seeded appreciation for this model to have taken the trouble to recreate it.    

  

Will Tue, 18/05/2021

I marvel at things like this, I consider myself to be fairly handy mechanically but to build a replica like that is next level !!

stonethemows Sat, 22/05/2021

For folks more recently arrived on the old lawnmower scene I should  point out that while I put the Budding replica together, with help, I did not make the parts. Briefly the background is this : about ten years ago Channel Four made a series of TV programmes called The Way Britain Worked presented by Guy Martin. One of the programmes featured Victorian engineering, though strictly speaking the machine is pre-Victorian. Club Member Brian Radam of the British Lawnmower Museum was commissioned to build a replica using the original Patent application drawings. Several skilled engineers and many, many hours of work produced working drawings and moulds for casting. In addition to the machine used for filming the opportunity was taken to produce parts for another four machines to order; mine is one of these.  Without Channel Four's instigation it would not have been financially viable. A link to the whole episode can be found here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rv4EEKzbT4&t=1301s

stonethemows Sat, 22/05/2021

It works for me Angus. It's episode 6, called The Park, lasts for 46 minutes odd. Does contain some adverts I'm afraid but the original link in Keith's blog is no longer available, hence I posted this one. 

wristpin Sat, 22/05/2021

Ah, just realised that the iPad opens it half way through; now all is revealed .  Definitely a local ology failure .

Mowing Wurzel Wed, 25/03/2026

Does anybody know which edition of the Engineer, circa 1930  that  the Budding's Mower. photos above was taken?

Clive1997 Fri, 27/03/2026

Hi Paul

Have sent you PDF copy of the Engineer that the images were in, they were rather poor photo's of 3157 (Science Museum)

 

 

Mowing Wurzel Fri, 27/03/2026

Thank you Clive that's excellent.   Will be appearing in the 1863 year on the Mower History section very soon with the text in plain text for ease of reading &c.

Presumably either the pull handles were removed when photo's taken or it didn't have any when discovered and R,S&J. had some made.

Mowing Wurzel Fri, 27/03/2026

also.....As you know the1849 advertisements (below)  mention upwards of over 3000 in use,  but show the older early 1840's machine.    I hope people are reading the mower history, as I have spent 1260 hours doing it so far.   (plus Keith's spend hundreds sorting out my spelling mistakes!)