From Cotton Mills To Kew Gardens – The Story Of The Lawn Mower

If the sight of an immaculate lawn leaves you feeling sympathetic to the mower today, then spare a the gardeners of yesteryear. While grazing animals were used by common people to keep open ground in check, the pristine lawns of the great gardens were managed by hand. The first lawns as we would understand them appeared in France around 1700 and very soon the rest of the world caught on to their charms.

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The desired effect was far too precise to be left to the randomness of grazing animals so early gardeners used shears or scythes to keep them perfectly trimmed.

It took slightly over 200 years for the first mechanical lawn mower to be invented. The engineer Edwin Beard Budding visited a cotton mill and realized that a machine used to ensure that fabric was cut accurately and neatly, could be adapted to achieve the same effect on grass. In 1830 he was granted a patent for his invention and his spiritual successors have been adapting and improving on it ever since.

It’s worth remembering that in the early 19^th Century, lawns in private gardens were essentially the preserve of the wealthy. That being so they tended to be on the large side, which meant that although mechanical mowers made the job quicker and easier, there was still room for improvement.

The earliest mowers were made of cast iron and so, although undeniably sturdy and long-lasting, they still required strength to use. An obvious next step was to create lawn mowers which could be pulled by horses and by the mid-19^th Century this was a reality. The horses which pulled them often had to wear leather boots to prevent hoof-marks on the grass!

By the late 19^th Century, steam-based technology had become advanced enough to be used in smaller devices such as lawn mowers and at the start of the 20^th Century, the first petrol-powered lawn mower was brought into commercial production by the famous Ransomes company.

The war-town years of the early 20^th Century changed the world in a number of ways. The “Upstairs Downstairs” world of previous centuries gave way to a world in which technology replaced servants in both the home and the garden. As a part of this change, homes became smaller and so did the gardens attached to them. Companies had to adapt to this change and in line with many other industries, companies which produced lawn mowers moved into mass production.

Over the first half of the 20^th Century lawn mowers became smaller, lighter and cheaper. By the 1960s metal lawn mowers began to give way to plastic ones which were lighter still. By this point lawn mowers were unarguably considered essential consumer items. They were priced in line with similar domestic appliances and had achieved a high degree of reliability and significant ease of use. The 1960s saw the introduction of the famous “hover” mowers, so called because they were designed to hover over the grass. Brought to market by Flymo, their ease of use made them ideal for most suburban gardens.

In the 1980s, however the hover’s growing supremacy in the market for domestic lawn mowers was challenged by the introduction of the Concorde lawn mower by Qualcast – one of Flymo’s key competitors. Not only was the machine a capable performer, it was backed by one of the best advertising slogans of all time “It’s a lot less bovver than a hover”. Thanks to the companies which make modern lawn mowers, mowing the lawn today is a whole lot easier than it was in 18^th Century France!