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Mountfield Garden Lawnmowers

Mountfield lawnmowers have not been around for as long as the more well known brands such as Flymo, Atco Qualcast, and other such companies who are famous for their lawnmower production.

It appears that the only manufacturer to make Mountfield lawnmowers are the Suffolk firm, Ransome, Sim, and Jefferies. They produce many brands of lawnmower for smaller mower firms who either no longer, or never have had, their own premises.

The company started out on its career in 1789, simply known as Ransome’s then, at the helm was Robert Ransome alone. An ironmonger from Norwich, which although in a completely different county (Norfolk), is only a short distance from the Suffolk town of Ipswich.

Ransome took on an old malting house from where he began working iron, casting it into ploughs for the many arable farms in the Suffolk countryside in the immediate vicinity of Ipswich.

There was an accident one day in his foundry; a mould broke, tipping red hot iron everywhere. This could have been disastrous, even fatal. As it happened it was the best thing that could ever have happened to Robert Ransome, and his business.

As the hot, molten metal spilled everywhere, it came into contact with sheets of the metal which were cold and untreated. This caused the surface of the metal to set ‘rock hard’. This was the first ever example of cold-cast iron. A skilled engineer, Ransome saw the potential for this straight away and se t about selling it as ’self sharpening’ blades for the ploughs that he made.

Business continued quite regularly after this discovery, and Ransomes supplied all of the neighbouring farms with their agricultural equipment and tools.

Until 1869 that is, when four employees, including two members of the Ransome family themselves, left the company and set up on their own on the other side of Ipswich, where they built a comfortable business of their own, building railway equipment, and draglines for use in the mines.

It was in 1902 that Ransomes were the first company to make, for mass production, a lawnmower which was powered by a petrol engine. As a result of this they sold off all of the other aspects of their business and concentrated only on building lawnmowers.

However, despite designing and building their own lawnmowers, not one of their models has ever been branded as ‘Ransomes’. They make lawnmowers only for the ‘Westwood’ and ‘Mountfield’ brands.

Ransomes continue today to make lawnmowers for Mountfield at their Suffolk plant, which is now based in a village called Stonham Aspel, about half way between the two Suffolk towns of Ipswich and Stowmarket, which is where rival lawnmower manufacturer Atco-Qualcast are based.