APPARENTLY you can blame it all on the British Army.

Those endless hours spent pushing, pulling or even sitting on a lawnmower, trying to create a billiard table surface on a patch of green that looks like it's been galloped over by the 7th Cavalry, are due to itchy Army uniforms in the 19th Century.

In the town of Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 1830, there was a factory making military uniforms and part of the process was knapping, or trimming down, the hairs on the serge cloth.

This was carried out on a bench machine by cylindrical cutters.

Enter engineer Edwin Beard Budding, who took one look at the process and decided he could adapt it to cut grass, which, before then, had always been done by gangs of men with hand scythes.

Budding patented his revolving blade machine and the lawn mower industry was up and running - or mowing.

Some of its oldest and most interesting examples will be at Malvern Garden and Country Show in a fascinating display of vintage grass cutting equipment pulled together by enthusiast Tony Hopwood, who lives near Upton-upon-Severn.

There will be hand-operated cylinder mowers dating from the 1870s and the oldest motor mower will be a 1909 model from the Ransome company.

But, likely to steal the show, will be a demonstration of a horse-drawn mower, pulled by an 11hh Welsh Pony stallion called Justice.

The mower normally lives in a mower museum in Somerset, but Justice has a grander home altogether. He will be travelling up from the Royal Mews at Windsor, where his particular claim to fame was to transport Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, on her 100th birthday in a special carriage that had originally been made for Queen Victoria.

How he takes to mowing grass at Malvern remains to be seen, but in the traditions of British royalty, he will no doubt carry out his duties with aplomb.

The arrival of mowers all those years ago was a real boon to royalty and others with country mansions with expansive lawns.

"Before the invention of the mower, they were cut by gangs of men using scythes, who walked across the grass in lines," Tony explained. "This was a highly skilled job, normally carried out first thing in the morning with the dew on the grass.

"The timing was for two reasons. Firstly the grass cut better when wet and secondly the labourers were out of the way by the time the lords and ladies were up and about.

"An expert with a scythe could cut the grass down to between an inch and an inch-and-a-half, but I doubt whether there would be anyone with the skill to do that these days."

Mowers put the scythes - for lawn mowing anyway - back in the potting shed for good.

"Several companies soon took out licences from Budding to manufacture mowers," Tony added.

"Among the first was Ransome, which had a licence in 1831, and by 1850 there were five companies making mowers.

"Pony mowers came in about 1870 and there were even steam mowers in the 1890s, although they weren't a great success because they kept depositing steam all over the operator and lumps of hot coal all over the lawn."

By the early 1900s, motor mowers had arrived, powered mostly by adapted motorcycle engines. This allowed larger machines to be developed and cutting widths to be increased.

Several of the vintage grasscutters at Malvern belong to the national collection of mowers run by Andrew Hall and Michael Duck in Somerset, where there are more than 2,000 models on display.

Others will include examples from Tony's collection, which is rather more modest, but does have the benefit of being used regularly.

Each week, the grass being of suitable length on his lawns and paddock, he wheels out a 1924 Dennis with a 24in cut and a 1947 Dennis with 36in blades.

"The 24in is probably one of the oldest working mowers in the country," he said.

"And it cuts just as well now, as it did when it was made. The blades never need sharpening, because if you set them correctly they sharpen themselves."

As sharp as the crease in a soldier's trousers, in fact.