Budding Patent Retailer - Burgess & Key of London

Burgess & Key was a major British manufacturer of agricultural machinery from the Victorian era onwards. The business was originally located at 95 Newgate Street and later at Holborn Viaduct. It achieved widespread international acclaim for its pioneering engineering advancements.

The company's early products included "mowing machines" but the descriptions and illustrations found in publications from 1830 through to the early 1850s show that this meant agricultural machines with sickle cutter bars designed for hay mowing, reaping and similar applications. An example of such can be seen in this 1860 Advertisement in The Gardeners Chronicle & Agricultural Gazette.

However, it would seem the company was offering Ferrabee-made lawnmowers at least as early as 1856 because an advertisement (below) in the Gardeners Chronicle that year includes an illustration of a Ferrabee Improved. 

A few years later, an advertisement for the company in the Gardeners Chronicle from 1863 includes an illustration of what is believed to be a Picksley Sims mower (identified by the presence of John Whitaker's front swivel castors in the design).

The company evolved over the following decades, eventually specialising in horticultural equipment. It produced at least one lawn mower of its own, known as the Bee, during the 1920s when the company was known as W J and C T Burgess. The business had closed by the late 1930s.