[alan]

That looks a very good lineup of Colebys. And the sun was shining!

This year has certainly seen a significant rise in the amount of visitors passing through the VHGMC website looking for information or doing research. I noted that one major manufacturer (who will remain nameless) used some information about their vintage machines that had been compiled on the VHGMC, I only noticed it because it appeared on their social media!

I have been able to compile quite a lot of information about horticultural machinery this year. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for several years but never had the time, although I’ll firmly point the finger at a certain member by the name Trusty220 who convinced me I should do the research – but I think he’ll deny it! Because of research I’ve also spoken to club members that I’ve not spoken with previous and that’s been really useful.

Hopefully we shall get through this uncertain time. In the future I’m wanting to visit the National Archives in Kew and also MERL. I’m hoping that might happen next year.

[alan]

That’s great news.

I’ve had need to contact a few manufacturers recently regarding their archive material, it can be very hit and miss getting a reply!

It would be good to see a copy of the article when it appears in their publication.

[alan]

I have had a look through newspaper archives and see that some dealer adverts in the 1950’s onwards refer to ‘Howard Rotavators’ as in the attached 1956 Cyril Johnson advert, this may however just be a sloppy way of the person who compiled the advert referring to the Howard company or what they produced. The Johnson advert also says “If it’s not a Howard – it’s not a Rotavator”, I wonder if at this point the word Rotavator had become associated with other manufacturers machines in much the way we use Google to refer to searching the internet or call a vacuum cleaner a Hoover.

Another word that have may spun off from Rotavator is rotavation, a word used in Howard adverts certainly from the 1940’s on. The 1950’s North Street Motors advert says “It’s worth seeing “Rotavation” in action” and the 1949 Ernest doe advert mentions Rotavation. Also the 1952 newspaper article details Howard and ‘The new process of land reclamation known as rotavation…’

The word ‘rotavating’ appears in a couple of small line adverts for Howard in the 1940’s and in the 1960’s I see there are line adverts for jobbing gardeners offering to ‘rotavate’ or to have one’s garden ‘rotavated’ but this could refer to using any suitable machine on the market to do the job. A 1968 advert: “Craig’s Rotavating Services, Gardens Rotavated, Grass Cut, trees felled, Phone…etc”.

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[alan]

I can see the confusion. Handlebars aside, looking at the tin work it looks very similar to the Atco Ensign from the brochures…but then many mowers do look the same such as the Webb. Perhaps someone wanted to upgrade their Webb (or other) to an Atco, much like sticking go-faster stripes to a car!

Anyone any ideas?

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[alan]

A larger image of a BOIL advert:

[alan]

I never thought to look at the VHGMC stuff, instead I looked through some magazines! That’ll teach me!

Many thanks for linking the two threads together.

[alan]

B.O.I.L stands for British Overhead Irrigation Ltd. So can assume it’s from one of their irrigation systems, dating from the early 1950’s onwards.

Bits of info say that the Wizard Simplex was an oscillator irrigating crops 25′ to each side, does this sound right?

B.O.I.L were for many years based at Upper Halliford, Shepperton, Middlesex. I’ll quote the text: “They specialised in artificial rain equipment, the principle being the projection of jets of water in such a way that it atomises and falls naturally to simulate rain”.

[alan]

Andy, Many thanks for the information.

I have had a look and found information on the Festival Auto Culto. I have found an advert and have a photo from which the advert image was taken. I’ll attach both. I’m sure that if I look harder I’ll find some other manufacturers that attended.

The archives relating to the Festival are held by the National Archives at Kew, I’d like to have a look at those!

There are many references to horticultural groups and flower shows throughout the country having Festival of Britain theme events and shows.

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[alan]

That’s a good question!

Anything that’s a snapshot in time, so an item with box (small hand tools etc), with instructions, with an advert from the time and with price or receipt or some history.

I’d suggest anything unusual or anything from a small factory rather than a generic re-badged item from a massive churn-them-out factory. This is particularly true for future battery models, look back at potential futuristic machines from the 50’s and 60’s that hardly made production, are some of our items nowadays going to be short-run production items too?

In 2000 I bought a lawnmower cheap from Focus DIY as they were flogging them off for £99. I did at the time think of buying another one and putting it away, unused and in it’s box. Would it be worth £99 today 20 years on, the Briggs and Stratton engine would have been a good investment if it still worked! Although I have this nagging feeling that the steel deck would have rusted through and mice would have made a nest in the box!

[alan]

I don’t know much about Flymo’s but I’ve had a search and found an advert from 1980. It looks very similar and based on that I’d say it is a GL 19 inch. They were advertised from the late-ish 1970’s into the 1980’s and maybe beyond that.

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[alan]

I’m not sure how many of the 600 series tractors are in the UK. I’ve done some research on the Case range of garden and lawn tractors as we have quite a few in the collection but not a 600.

Research has thrown up a lot of newspaper adverts from independent machinery dealers advertising the Case range of tractors.

I have a Case brochure and have attached an image for the 600 Series from it.

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[alan]

The Fairlawn instructions can be downloaded from the members section:

Literature-Downloads

I’m re-doing the download pages bit at present.

[alan]

Thanks for that Charlie.

In 2014 I made a short video walking through the horticultural exhibits at Newby Hall, North Yorkshire. Video is on Youtube, I haven’t yet shared it on FB.

One day we will all get back to wandering through machinery again.

[alan]

When I researched the Ginge article for the VHGMC I struggled to find a great deal about Ginge. However, it did appear that the push cylinder mowers were very popular at the time but my guess is that many will have ended up in the back of sheds, got corroded and then ended up at the tip. Newer versions are available today which shows how good the mechanics were.

I’d suggest keeping the mower, particularly since it appears to be a good colour scheme and it has the reasonably rare Ginge-Raadvad logo on it too (if my memory is correct Ginge is now owned by Alko).

It’s probably one of those items that if it was at a show people would comment that they used to have one! Why not clean it up a little, sit in on a piece of astro-turf and add some vintage adverts to it? It’s be quite unusual to see.

[alan]

The brochures show a red and silver colour scheme as well.

[Author]

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