As most in the industry will know, Brian Radam’s British Lawnmower Museum regularly features in listings of the UK’s most unusual and quirky museums, alongside the likes of the Derwent Pencil Museum, the Dog Collar Museum and the House of Marbles.

Nonetheless, the display of over 200 machines from across the ages, attracts thousands of visitors to the museum above Brian’s retail shop in a modest side-street in Southport.

Now, Brian has written a new book which initially takes us back to Roman days when author Pliny the Younger is thought to be the first person to mention a grass lawn 2000 years ago. And for thousands of years, grass was cut using various forms of scythes in often back-breaking conditions.

That all famously changed in 1830 when Stroud engineer Edwin Budding, working as a textile engineer at Thrupp Mill, discovered that he could adapt a machine used to trim the nap from guardsman’s uniforms, to also trim the grass surrounding the mill.

Often trying out the machine at night to avoid the disparaging cries that branded his prototype as ‘lunacy’, Budding finally settled on a final design and obtained a patent in 1830. From there, things moved rapidly. In 1832, he sold the patent licence to Ransomes for the Ipswich-based farm machinery manufacturer to develop the design. Over the next 20 years, Ransomes produced 1500 machines, moving into the manufacture of petrol-powered machines in 1896.

From there, many other manufacturers saw the potential and names such as Shanks, Greens, JP, Allettt and Dennis entered the market.

However, it was the Atlas Chain Company founded by Charles H Pugh who adopted the brand name ATCO and did much to drive the popularity of lawnmowers in the early part of the 20th Century. In the 1920’s, the Atco Standard was regarded as the gardener’s best friend, but development was halted during WW2 as the production switched to the war effort.

Service heaven

By the 1950’s, production of lawnmowers really ramped up with Atco amongst the leading brands – and at the age of 15, Brian Radam became an apprentice at Charles H Pugh. The lawnmower business was not every boys dream career, he says, and in any case he was earning twice his weekly wage in one night playing in a rock band (probably why Brian, with a passing resemblance, was soon nicknamed Ringo by dealers on one of the fabled week long dealer trips to the AL-KO factory).

The Atco service centres were factory owned and provided a service to cylinder mowers that would today been regarded as excessive – and expensive. Collection, steam clean, strip down, immerse in caustic bath, replace worn engine parts such as piston, rings, crankshaft and conrod, re-bore cylinder if required, regrind cylinder and bottom blade, completely repaint, run and test, deliver back to customer and demonstrate – al with 12 month warranty.

It was a service managers dream, now from a by-gone and phased out in the late 1970s, as service responsibility switched to lawnmower specialists.

The book, then takes us on a tour of lawnmower development, from cylinder mowers through rotaries, hover machines, electric, battery power and onto the robotic mowers of today. Packed full of fascinating photographs, Brian Radam’s book is a fitting and comprehensive account of this quintessential and sometimes ridiculed piece of kit - but without which lawns, sportsgrounds, golf courses and parks would not exist in their present form.

Nor is the book without its cringy but oft used slogans like ‘What mower would you want?’, ‘All you need to mow’ and ‘You’ll be no mower alone once you’ve read this book!’

DETAILS

Rather aptly Lawnmowers is published by Amberley Publishing based in Stroud (the home of the lawnmower), priced at £14.99.

Ref: ISBN: 978 4456 9482 2 (print) and ISBN: 978 1 4456 9484 9 (ebook).

www.amberley-books.com