The only known example to have survived, the Charles Neat was typical of the light, originally treadle-driven, plain-turning lathes made for amateur and light professional use from around 1850 to 1900.
The lathe would have had a centre height of around four inches and been able to take perhaps 30 inches between centres.
Flat-topped with vertical slides, the bed was fitted with an open gap and a central slot through which the holding-down bolts for the headstock slide rest and toolpost passed. With all hand feeds and no way of propelling the carriage down the bed, the lathe was equipped with the usual and essential long travel top slide. Unfortunately, the arrangement was not of the cross and top slide type, but a single slide arranged to swivel on a boss. The arrangement of what should be a toolpost on the slide is unclear from the photographs, and whatever it carried might have been a special fitting, perhaps for spinning.
The headstock, lacking a speed-reducing backgear, was of the simplest possible design, having just a single, plain bronze bearing at the front to support the solid spindle, with its rear held against an adjustable hardened point. This arrangement, despite its many potential shortcomings, was inexpensive to engineer, effective in practice and a design that many makers persisted in using until the 1920s.
When new, the headstock spindle would have been fitted not with a V-belt - it would be a long time before they appeared - but a round leather "rope", "gut band" or "cord" as it was variously called. This arrangement severely limited the amount of power that could be transmitted, although the lightweight construction of the lathe, together with the simple carbon-steel turning tools of the time, were also limiting factors. Although now missing, the treadle-driven flywheel would have been machined with three grooves near its periphery to provide slower speeds and one or two on the inside to give a faster range.
Surviving with the lathe is a large-diameter faceplate, what could be a lightweight faceplate-cum-4-jaw chuck, and a hand T-rest for woodturning.
Similar lathes, and ornamental turning lathes based on them that were made in London during the 1800s include the London Lathe & Tool Co., W.H.Bailey,  Pfeil, Munro,  Millen,  Gale,  George Hatch,  Melhuish,  Buck,  Hayward,  Cook, and Muckle..