Steam Powered Lawn Mowers.

Updated: 14 Nov 2004

Left: The Leyland Steam lawnmower: late 1890s.
The Leyland steam mower was one of the first motorised lawn mowers. It was produced for just a few years at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th centuries.
The mower was, judging from the height of the handlebars, about six feet tall. It had a vertical boiler mounted above the mower chassis, and was powered by a small single-cylinder steam engine with a sizable flywheel and spur gear transmission to the rear driving roller. (completely unguarded, as was not uncommon at the time)
Surprisingly, the boiler was oil-fired, possibly to reduce the workload of the driver. Stoking and steering would have made an uneasy combination.

Cutting the grass on large areas such as playing fields or counry-house parks was a big job, beyond the power of any reasonable number of men pushing hand lawn mowers. It had traditionally been done by a row of men with scythes, but as labour costs rose, and the neat cut available from the cylinder mower became mandatory, other methods were adopted. Big multi-cylinder mowers for this work were usually drawn by horses or ponies.
Although steam had been established as the prime source of power for decades (and in fact it was already meeting the first tentative challenges from internal-combustion engines) it was not until 1893 that the first practical steam lawn mower appeared. It was designed by James Sumner of Leyland, Lancashire. Very few appear to have been made, and there is apparently only one surviving example, safely preserved at the University of Reading.
The Leyland mower could be operated by one person, and removed the need to house and feed a draught animal that might have no other work to do. However, that one person needed to be skilled in the operation of steam machinery, which can be lethally unforgiving of incapacity or inattention, and would have expected appropriate wages. The boiler would have required a regular supply of water. It was also inevitably expensive to buy, and required careful maintenance, like any machine that included a steam boiler.
Sumner renamed his company the Leyland Steam Motor Company in 1895, and the business in time went on to become the motor-car manufacturer British Leyland.
Competing steam mowers were marketed shortly after the Leyland, by Alexander Shanks of Arbroath, and Thomas Green of Leeds; none of the machines was a commercial success. The introduction of internal-combustion engines at the end of the 19th century gave a much more practical prime mover; Ransomes of Ipswich produced its first petrol engined mower in 1902, and there was clearly no future for steam mowing.
Examples of steam lawnmowers are in very short supply; apart from the example at the University of Reading no others are known. There is a modern replica of the Leyland steam mower in a museum in Coventry, made by British Leyland apprentices some years ago.