Horticultural Hayters of Spellbrook

摘要

The first pedestrian-controlled Hayter rotary mower was made by Douglas Hayter at Spellbrook near Bishops Stortford sixty years ago. After training in the retail trade, he decided to join a touring air circus to help maintain the aircraft. A change of career to the building trade saw him setting up in business in 1938 specialising in farm buildings and cattle handling equipment. With the war at an end he decided to extend his workshops and after unsuccessfully attempting to cut an area of rough grass at his builder's yard with a cutter bar machine he decided to find out about other types of grass cutting machinery. Following a visit to the London Science Museum in 1946 where he found details of early designs of rotary mower he decided to build his own machine using various bits and pieces including a second hand two-stroke engine and a dustbin lid.