Advice please - the lawn was quite red in areas and in April and again in June I gave it a high nitrogen feed it seemed to be improving but the came the draught

I've been re-seeding some bald areas of my lawns .. not helped by the blackbirds and pigeons, which dig up the new areas, even several weeks after the fresh grass has grown through well...

Certainly my lawns don't have bald patches as large as on yours. It is possible some animals are using your grass for urinating.. perhaps hedgehogs ? ... but you could experiment with one area of yours as follows ..

... my way of doing things is to spike holes all across the bare parts .. and then shake lawn seed over the whole area and finish with a little fine soil or compost over everything...

after that, make sure the area never dries out... water often with a fine spray from your watering can ..

If you think wild birds will interfere with your sowing, cover the seeded parts with metal grids... you can see pictures of mine on my recent blogs. Good luck with sorting out your lawns.

Thanks TT have have tried reseeding but the red areas that are spreading and turning so bleached that concerning me

Lawns can be very time-consuming, can't they ! It would certainly be useful to know the reason that those areas turn red, before you spend time and effort on new turfs !

Have a read of this
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=268
If your lawn turned red then I would suspect Red thread as in the article.

That's interesting, Owdboggy ... part of the article suggests aerating (spike holes) which I mentioned above, and that process has certainly helped my lawn in general.

Hi Owdboggy and TT - I have been treating it as if it was red thread with a high nitrogen feed but it is getting worse and is quite wide spread but I do not want to put chemicals on it. The trouble with doing spike holes is I broke my foot in 2016 and again in 2017 so that is out

I sit on my lawns and spike small problem areas over and over again with a screwdriver ... time consuming, but beneficial to the grass, and therapeutic in a strange sort of way ! That's sad about your foot.

Your damaged grass still looks to me like it is being urinated on by a mammal. Generally lawns can survive some urine on them because rainfall and watering dilute it, but urine with no water added and heated constantly by hot sun will burn and do severe damage. Only a guess .. just trying to help. I hope you find an answer to this. If it were my lawn I would try watering it frequently.

Thanks TT

I'm in Norfolk and my lawn looks just the same. All of the above causes are possible, - but I think it's just the weather. It's gradually coming back in places but still has large dead looking patches - probably worse than yours. We've had such extreme heat and drought for so long it's hard to know if it will recover. I'm going to leave mine for another month when hopefully East Anglia will get some useful rain to see if it will recover.
I'm afraid we may have to over-seed large areas in the Autumn - but it's far too warm and dry to do it yet.

Thanks Pb - it is now very slowly getting more sparse tufts. The high nitrogen feed has helped after we had some heavy rain.

I haven't even dared to feed mine (although it really needs it) for fear of scorching it more.

I was reluctant but we had so much rain I thought I would do it.