Hayter

Douglas Hayter (1914-2000), an engineer, had been in business at Spellbrook since 1938 and formed Hayters Ltd in 1946. Having seen a century-old horse-drawn rotary mower at the Science Museum, he built a frame from spare parts around a second-hand two-stroke engine, and the Hayter Motor Scythe, a hand-propelled rotary with a 24-inch cut, went into production in 1947, Ipswich Town Council among its first customers. Four-stroke engines with horizontal crankshafts and a safety stone guard followed in the 1950s; Hayters (Exports) Ltd was set up in 1955, the Hayterette domestic mower of 1957 won BAGMA's best horticultural machine of the year, and in 1960 the firm was granted a Royal Warrant for supplying horticultural equipment to the Sandringham estate. Lodden Engineering was taken over in 1964, and the rear-roller Harrier, still the company's mainstay, appeared in 1970.

Two Hayter attachments were approved by the Rover Company for the Land Rover. The Hayter 6/14 rotary grass cutter, on a leaflet numbered 9621/ETP/5M/7/58 of July 1958 for the Series II, was a rear-mounted three-unit machine giving a 6, 10 or 14-foot cut, 'specifically designed for grassland reclamation and improvement' and built for the heaviest duty: it reclaimed whitethorn, blackthorn and bramble scrub without choking, cut in wet or fine weather, covered eight acres an hour on the full 14-foot cut at five miles an hour, had hinged wing extensions that followed undulating ground and a cutting height adjustable from one to six inches. Home distribution was by Hayters (Sales) Ltd of Spellbrook, Bishop's Stortford (telephone Sawbridgeworth 3444), and export by Hayters (Exports) Ltd of 60 Cheapside, London EC2. The Hayter Alternator Attachment for the Series II, on a 1964 leaflet, was a welding set: a single-phase medium-frequency alternator in light-alloy castings weighing 122 lb, with a rotating permanent-magnet field and so no slip rings, brushes or rotating windings, driven by vee-belts from the centre power take-off and giving 30 to 250 amps at 425 cycles a second, supplied complete with bracket, belts, guards, cables, electrode holder, earth clamp, head shield and chipping hammer; the Land Rover needed the centre PTO, an engine governor on petrol models and oil-pressure and water-temperature gauges.

About 1984 the company was acquired by the F. H. Tomkins group. In 2005 the American Toro Company bought Hayter, and it now trades as Toro U.K. Limited (registered in England no. 5286686) with its head office at Spellbrook, Bishop's Stortford CM23 4BU, where the Harrier range, now including battery models, is still designed and made.