Currently viewing the category:
"Gardeners L-P"
By chance I found the headstone on William Murfin’s grave at St Nicholas, Chiswick. I had already discovered his will, but it threw up a question to which the inscription on this headstone provides the answer. William Murfin (1741-1813) was head gardener at Chiswick House by 1790 and worked for Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, on […]
Who was John Middlemist, the gardener responsible for the camellia Middlemist’s Red? This bloomed in March 2010 in the newly-restored conservatory at Chiswick House and made the national press.
Nicholas Parker was a wealthy gardener who lived on Strand on the Green. After his death in 1726, his bequests to Henry Woodman and his future wife Eleanor Compton, and to other members of the Compton family, ensured the continuation of the garden grounds in skilled hands.
Several generations of the Masters family, including women gardeners, cultivated garden grounds in Strand on the Green and London Stile in Chiswick and Acton parishes in the 17th and 18th centuries.