A MAJOR art collector will exhibit Heath Robinson drawings at a cherished Pinner landmark starting this week.

Chris Beetles has put together a spread of up to 25 works by the illustrator, who lived in Pinner from 1908 to 1918, and they will hang at West House, in Pinner Memorial Park, for almost a month from Friday.

The sketches of wacky inventions make light of English society in the first half of the 20th century and will form an exhibition titled Machines and Inventions which finishes on April 17.

The event is being promoted by the Chris Beetles Gallery, in the Green Park area of central London, and will come as a major coup for those who worked to turn the site into a permanent Heath Robinson museum.

Martin Verden, instrumental in the campaign to restore the house, said: “Chris Beetles has got a very wide collection so we are very privileged to have him come down.

“We invited him to West House and he said it would be wonderful to have an out of town exhibition of Heath Robinson.

“We are certainly hoping that people who have never been there before will come. It's a real feather in our cap to have something like this.”

The house, once home to Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, fell into disrepair in the 1980s and at one point looked likely to close, until residents of Pinner took on the job of saving it.

The site opened for the first time following renovation work in June last year, when a 500-strong crowd came to see the product of years of hard work.

Heath Robinson made his name as a comic wartime artist and his illustrations were used to sell products as diverse as toffee and asbestos roofing.