Category: Chiswick Gardeners

A confusion of Lewis Kennedys

For the historian, the practice of naming sons after fathers and/or grandfathers can cause no end of confusion. This has certainly been the case with a family of Scots gardeners called Kennedy.What follows is an attempt to clarify which gardeners called Lewis Kennedy had links with the Chiswick area.

A Lewis Kennedy prepared Notitiae, elegant notes and sketches, which survive in the archives at Chatsworth. These proposed improvements to the estate immediately to the east of the grounds of Chiswick House, which the 6th Duke of Devonshire purchased in 1812. This had been the property of Sir Stephen Fox, who invested in a magnificent house and grounds there in the early 1680s. It passed through successive owners after Fox’s death in 1716. From 1758 it was the home of the Earl and Countess of Morton and was later known as  Moreton Hall. The Duke’s purpose was to enlarge his gardens and the Hall was soon demolished. His enhancements include the Italian garden and conservatory, the home of the Chiswick House Camellia Festival.

This Lewis Kennedy was born in 1789 and, despite his youth, had already worked for the Empress Josephine in France, obtaining permission to travel and export plants to France during the Napoleonic Wars. [This contract was almost certainly facilitated by a wealthy London merchant, George Hibbert (1757-1837), who was an impressive gardener, funding plant hunters and acting as a silent partner in the Vineyard Nursery. He was on intimate terms with Josephine and recommended that Kennedy be engaged to advise her.] The son of John Kennedy (1759-1842), Lewis’s expertise at such a young age must have come from working at the family’s Vineyard Nursery, the famous concern of Kennedy and Lee on the site where the Olympia exhibition halls were later built. John Kennedy was one of seven children, including three sets of twins. Two sons were both baptised Lewis but only the two other siblings – John and Amelia – survived to adulthood. Amelia Emily Kennedy married William Bridgewater Page; he trained at the Vineyard Nursery and in 1815 launched his own nursery in Southampton.

Kennedy’s scheme for Trebartha Castle that was never carried out

Lewis Kennedy (1789-1877) produced albums or “Notitiae” for other clients. In 2011 The Huntington Library in California acquired one of these, for Trebartha Hall in Cornwall. Kennedy’s proposals are set out in 12 manuscript pages, supplemented with 8 watercolor sketches and 5 pen-and-wash vignettes with verses, bound in olive green leather to seduce his client! Kennedy wrote “I have ventured to annex, a small slip of paper to shew the possibilities of Trebartha in the Castle style & at trifling more expence …” Seductive stuff but never implemented!

Another Lewis Kennedy (d 1782), born in Scotland, is said to have established this nursery in the first half of the 1740s with a fellow Scot, James Lee, from Selkirk (1715-1795). Lee had served his apprenticeship with Philip Miller, also a Scot, at the Chelsea Physic Garden and Loudon stated that he had then worked at Whitton Park and on the Syon Estate. John H Harvey suggested that this Lewis Kennedy was grandfather of the author of the Chiswick Notitiae. He identified him also as the Lewis Kennedy who was gardener to Lord Wilmington at Chiswick, when he subscribed to Philip Miller’s Dictionary in 1731, to Furber’s Short Introduction in 1733 and to Rocque’s map of London and Environs in 1741. Lord Wilmington showed his house and garden to Sir John Clerk of Penicuik in 1733; he wrote that he “shewed me all his gardens where there is a vast variety of Trees, Shrubs, plants & flowers…. One Kennedy a Scotsman is Gardiner & has been with him many years. I found the Ananis or pineapple very forward – he has a vast stock of Tulips Hyacinths Anemonies & Ranunculuses…. He has a neat Library for phylosophie & Botanie books of all kinds”.

Thomas Kirton, the local blacksmith, had a forge a short walk from Lord Wilmington’s house (now under the Hogarth Business Park). Kirton had worked for Lord Wilmington at Chiswick and was recommended by him to the Earl of Northampton. Kirton’s will included a bequest of a mourning ring to a Lewis Kennedy in 1755, and it makes sense that this refers to Lord Wilmington’s gardener. (Kirton’s mother, Mary, had kept up the family forge after her husband’s death and her name appears on invoices for smith’s work for Lord Burlington at Chiswick House and in the accounts in the 1720s, amongst the archives at Chatsworth).

The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol xiii, carried a report of the death of another Lewis Kennedy, gardener to the Duke of Bedford on the Woburn estate. Kennedy had cut his throat and died instantly; his suicide note, dated 6 October 1743, was printed in full. It referred to a long period of mental illness and instability, and asked for compassion rather than ridicule, but Kennedy was rational enough to have sorted out practical matters, leaving with his suicide note an IOU from Alexander Brown confirming that he owed Kennedy £10 and also a letter to Brown which asked him to ensure that Kennedy had a decent Christian burial and that his box of possessions should be sent to his nephew who was gardener to the Earl of Northampton.

The Lewis Kennedy who entered into a partnership with Lee soon after his uncle’s tragic death must have been this nephew. He was most likely the son of Thomas Kennedy (brother to the gardener at Woburn) who died in 1721 a few months after his son’s birth.

Sir Stephen Fox’s house was purchased by Lord Wilmington from Fox’s son and inherited by the Earl of Northampton – so the estate which today forms the eastern segment of the grounds of Chiswick House, comprising the Italian garden, the conservatory full of camellias and the series of walled gardens to the north, played a part in the horticultural lives of two of the Kennedys. One managed it for Lord Wilmington (and seems to have gone on to work for its next owner, the Earl of Northampton) and the other, his grandson, made ambitious and audacious proposals for its modification as a young man in 1812-14.

Sources of information:

John H Harvey, Early Nurserymen, Phillimore, 1974

E J Willson, James Lee and the Vineyard Nursery, Hammersmith, Hammersmith Local History Group, 1961 (Eleanor Willson obtained family information from descendants of both the Lee and Kennedy families)

Huntington Library, Trebartha Notitiae  http://www.huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary

Chatsworth Archives: purchase of Morton Hall, Kennedy’s Notitiae for this estate, and Chiswick House accounts used in  R T Spence, Chiswick House and Its Gardens 1726-1732, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 135, No 1085, 1993

Gillian Clegg, Moreton Hall, Brentford & Chiswick Local History Journal no 9 (2000)

Sally Jeffrey, Fox’s “Extraordinarily Fine” Chiswick Garden, Brentford & Chiswick Local History Journal no 15, 2006

The Gentleman’s Magazine, xiii – note about suicide of Duke of Bedford’s gardener

Family history references traced and/or checked via www.ancestry.co.uk

Information from Richard Hewlings, English Heritage about recommendation to the Earl of Northampton.

www.georgehibbert.com – a website about the Hibbert family run by Nick Hibbert Steele

Further Reading:

Jan Woudstra,The Italian Garden at Chiswick House in English Heritage Historical Review 5, 2010

Clare Howard, The influence of the Kennedy family at Croxdale Hall, Historic England Research issue 5, 2017

Note: This piece has prompted interest from several descendants of the gardening Kennedys – I am grateful for the information they have passed on and have been happy to share my research. Yesterday I took two of them for a walk around the Italian Garden and the Duke’s Avenue at Chiswick House to explore the design ideas Lewis Kennedy (1789-1877) had conceived in 1814.  2 July 2012

 

 

William Hogarth’s garden

Stepping through the gate in the wall around Hogarth’s House in Chiswick, you leave behind six lanes of roaring traffic. It really does feel like stepping back into the past, even when planes are flying in every 90 seconds towards Heathrow on a warm summer’s day.

T M Rooke's view of the House from the lane; John Allgrove's signboard is fixed to the wall (Hounslow Local Studies)

The House re-opened in November 2011 following a major refurbishment over the previous 4 years. Following a good deal of new research it has been possible to create a new presentation of the House. In the years before it closed for the refurbishment, trustees and volunteers asked visitors to the House what would make a visit more enjoyable. We were especially interested in the response of those who had come for the first time or returned after a long gap because of a special event. There were two strong messages from these discussions. First, they wanted to make sense of Hogarth’s House as a home and, secondly, they wanted to know who else had lived there before and after the Hogarths. Rather than continuing the past practice of using it as a gallery with serried ranks of Hogarth’s prints in black frames, the new presentation  reveals the Hogarth household using the House as their second home, away from the noise of Leicester Fields, and tells the stories of their lives, provides information about their friends and neighbours and also reveals the fascinating residents who came before and after them.

It was not, however, part of the plan to refurbish the garden within this project. The double gates at the bottom of the garden have been restored and given back their spherical finials (found in the shrubbery!), and the path from there to the House now provides level access from the pavement outside. This follows the line of a path on the 1865 OS map. But replanting and dealing with the sycamore seedlings in neglected areas has to wait for the time being. My research into the garden in the past will help guide appropriate planting in the future. So what do we know?

The plot was an orchard, probably from the 1670s. It was enclosed from Chiswick’s Common Field by the Downes family who were millers and bakers; they appear int he parish accounts  supplying communion bread to St Nicholas Church. Susannah Downes left the plot to one of her sons in 1713 and the new house was completed by 1717. In 1749 the Hogarths bought it from the son of the first occupant, Lutheran Pastor Georg Andreas Ruperti. His substantial library was sold over 8 evenings in 1732 and pleasingly included some gardening books.

The present garden is a distorted triangle and it was already that shape by the time of the first large scale Ordnance Survey in the 1860s. But on John Rocque’s 1745 Survey of London and Environs, there is clearly a rectangular plot. John Philips, a nephew of Mrs Hogarth and her cousin, Mary Lewis, kept a small collection of Hogarth mementoes and wrote notes to go with them. These items and the notes have found their way into Aberdeen City Art Gallery’s collection.

One note reads, ‘In 1759 Mr H increased the size of his garden by taking a lease for 21 years of 264 square foot from the Earl of Morton which made his garden square – The said pce forming two sides of a plain triangle.’ If this was a renewal of a previous lease it may explain the Rocque image for Morton House was next door to the west. [Built by Sir Stephen Fox in 1682-3 Morton House still stood when the property was acquired by the 6th Duke of Devonshire in 1812 in order to extend the grounds of Chiswick House. There he built the conservatory and employed Lewis Kennedy to lay out the Italian Garden; to the north of this three of Fox’s four walled gardens survive.]

It is not possible to recreate Hogarth’s rectangular garden as later developments – most of them aggressively inappropriate offices and industrial structures for the curtilage of a  Grade 1 listed house – crowd up against the walls today. However, there is some evidence that the core of the garden’s structure remains.

Detail from Hogarth's view, his house shown in shade.

Hogarth’s own sketch of his House, seen from Chiswick Common Field to the north, was published as a print by his widow in 1782. Tall trees seem to follow the line of the far boundary and the western wall of the garden, with lower fruit trees in front of them. The long wall facing the lane with a gate near the House can be seen. At the bottom of the garden (on the right/west) is a double door giving access to Hogarth’s small carriage house and/or stable with a room above – one of John Phillips’ notes against the print in a scrap book confirms that this was the “paintin room”. The studio was pulled down in the 1870s but a double gate remains here.

Hogarth's House in the 1880s. The mulberry is the largest tree, with a fan trained fruit tree on the wall to the left and two plum trees which survived until the 1930s to the right (Hounslow Local Studies)

The Hogarths would have known the old mulberry tree in his garden, and there are stories that Mrs Hogarth made mulberry pies for foundling children who were visiting them. The tree may date from the original orchard; it has survived bomb damage and old age and gave a good crop of fruit this year, some of which was used in small pies at the re-opening of the House. Most houses of this size would have had a vegetable plot growing pot herbs for the kitchen and Hogarth also had a nut walk where he enjoyed playing ninepins with his friends.

We know nothing about a flower garden here in the Hogarth’s time. However, Mary Lewis’s brother John, a flautist who was related by marriage to the Clitherows of Boston Manor, lived in The Butts in Brentford. Amongst his neighbours was the Swinden family and it is interesting to imagine that Lewises and Swindens knew each other sufficiently well for Mary Lewis to have bought seeds for her garden at Chiswick from Swinden’s catalogue. We may be able to plant some of his flower garden schemes in the future.

When the long connection of Hogarth relatives and friends came to an end in 1813 the House was put up for sale. The newspaper advertisement describes the garden.

Morning Chronicle 29 April 1814

From the mid 19th century the House was occupied by a variety of tenants. In about 1870 a nursery gardener called Coles was working the garden and his family shared the House with Alice Clack, who kept pigs. After Alfred Dawson restored the House in the early 1890s he let it to John Allgrove, described as a florist, who ran the Hogarth’s House Nursery there. Dawson also let to Allgrove part of the garden of his family’s home, The Cedars, which adjoined that of Hogarth’s House to the south.

John Allgrove with his wife in the garden (Hounslow Local Studies)

The House was purchased in 1901 by Lieut Col Shipway, who made it his personal project. He took specialist advice from Frederick W Peel, architect, and Austin Dobson, then Hogarth’s most recent biographer. He restored the building, made a collection of Hogarth prints and commissioned chairs and tables based on pieces in Hogarth’s works from the Chiswick Art-Workers’ Guild. He even took the photographs for the 1904 guide book.

Jessie Macgregor's 1913 sketch of the garden

The influence of the arts and crafts movement is clear in the garden; having been a nursery garden until Shipway purchased it, some replanting must have taken place during the restoration. The long path from the House to the bottom of the garden was retained, and still survives, and the bed by the wall was planted with purple irises behind a low box hedge. Beneath the mulberry were daffodils – all of this was recorded in the spring of 1913 Jessie Macgregor for her book Gardens of Celebrities and Celebrated Gardens.

The Scott brothers

Two brothers, probably Scots and both pineapple specialists, were working in Chiswick from about 1740. James Scott ran a nursery at Turnham Green while Henry was Lord Burlington’s gardener at Chiswick House until he set himself up as a gardener in Weybridge in the 1750s.

James Scott was running the Chiswick Nursery at Turnham Green from about 1740.  Henry Scott, his brother, was gardener to Lord Burlington at Chiswick House by 1738; in that year he travelled north to Burlington’s estate at Londesborough, to visit the gardener there, Thomas Knowlton (1692-1781) whose wife had recently died.

The extract from Milne’s Land Use Map, published in 1800, shows  the grounds of Chiswick House as ‘Chiswick Gardens’ while James Scott’s Chiswick Nursery occupied the L-shaped plot coloured peach in the north-east quarter of the map – they were only a short stroll apart.

These two men with Chiswick connections became known for their expertise in growing pineapples. John H Harvey thought the two brothers were Scots though I have not yet traced records of their birth or family connections. However, James’ skills were particularly valued by James Justice, a Scots horticulturist. In his The Scots gardiners director (1754) Justice recommended Scott’s cauliflower seeds and recorded that Scott supplied him with a pineapple stove and pineapple plants shipped from Chiswick to Edinburgh: “Mr James Scott at Turnham Green London will serve them as well and as cheap as any person”. Additional expertise in pineapples may have come through Henry’s connection with Thomas Knowlton, for this older man was also a specialist in cultivating these prized fruits.

James Scott’s fashionable advertisement, with its sumptuous border of fruits and exotic plants, makes clear that Pineapples were his speciality.

“Plants and Fruit of Ananas or Pine Apple
NB The Plants may be convey’d in health and ripe Fruit in perfection, any Journey of Sixteen Days.”

and, stressing his inventiveness and cost-effectiveness, he states that he

“directs Building Stoves, Walls & Frames for raising Ananas in any pt of Great Britain or Ireland, of materials cheapest in each respective place, & adapted for any sort of Fuel that is most plentiful. Likewise the most conven[ien]t and least expensive Fire Walls for Forcing Grapes, Apricocks, Cherrys, &c and new invented Fire Walls to raise early Melons & Cucumbers, free from the Watery quality they have in wet Seasons, & cheaper than common Frameing”.

Blanche Henrey’s book on Knowlton, No Ordinary Gardener (1986) includes extracts from a number of his letters, many written to gardening friends. They help us appreciate how highly prized pineapples were in 18th century England. Knowlton’s letters show that Lord Burlington valued them highly and sometimes had them sent as special gifts to friends. On 3 October 1738 Knowlton wrote to Samuel Brewer

“his L[or]dship being heare I have cutt a Large nr of pineaples some of them very Large & fine & have still a considerable n[umbe]r to spare to sarve his taible he talks of staying till Xmas before he will seat forward for London.”

He went on to mention projects for new heated “stoves” or greenhouses for pineapples being built at Raby Castle and at Chatsworth and also one in Lincolnshire where “his man”, John, had gone to live, “so that the pine aples will gain very much in this Island in a few yeares time”.

In another letter to Brewer, on 8 December 1742, Knowlton wrote

“I have abundance of fine frut wch is a grat Pleasure to his L[or]dshipe & creaditt to me . . . I am apt to belive my new pine aple fram[e] or Bead beats all that ever I see yett for that purpose and is much less Exspense than any thought of . . .”

His letters often accompany plants and seeds which he was exchanging with friends. He often praised fellow gardeners for their achievements. For  example, on 23 July 1754 he added a postscript to a letter to Richard Richardson saying

“this days post brought me a Lettr from Mr James Scot Turnham green & tells me he has published a cutt of the Sarracen or Side Sadle flower wch grew in his garden cullour 2s plain 1 shilling if you have a mind to have it of any Body in yr parts will ordr you on[e] as he desires me to promote the sail of it he says he exspects the mignificant nymphea next Xmas by a shipe from north america if you remember I told you of it he had seeds but not on[e] come up”.

The print of Sarracena purpurea was drawn by Timothy Lewis and engraved by Francis Vivares.  The plant is shown as it appeared in his garden “at The Pinery Turnham green the 18 April 1754”.  Scott clearly knew Knowlton well enough to ask him to help encourage sales of the print; Knowlton was well aware of the rare plants Scott was trying to cultivate and his past successes and failures.

Later in the same year both Scotts are mentioned in another letter when on 5 November Knowlton wrote to William Stonehouse, gardener to Richard Richardson. He not only mentioned James’ print of Sarracena but also the fact that Henry had

“published a fine print of Knowledge and Lab[ou]r assisted by the 4 Elements presenting the gard[ene]r with the fruits of the hotest Climates Extreemly well done in ye maner of a place bill & is the neatest thing of the Kind I have seen he sent me on[e] down”.

Henry Scott’s trade card (British Museum, D,2.333)

Henry’s beautiful trade card, of which there are several copies in the British Museum’s collection, has text in English and French, headed “Pine Apples, raised and sold by Henry Scott, Gardener at Weybridge at Surrey, where Persons may be supplied with ripest Fruit during their Season and Plants of all Sizes sold at the Lowest Price”. He makes a virtue of the good transport links between London and Weybridge – the Chertsey coach daily and the Weybridge boats twice a week – for conveying both plants and fruit to customers. His business embraces the same sort of contracting that James was offering along with the sale of plants and as the image makes clear, the sale of the greatly prized pineapples! The handsome trade card was published in October 1754; the design was by Samuel Wale and the engraving again by Vivares. A pineapple is shown growing in a pot in the foreground while the gardener – is this a portrait of Henry Scott himself? – holds one aloft.

So for a few years, Henry was well established at Weybridge, with his wife and their daughter Martha. However, Martin Hopkinson has referred me to a newspaper reference about the sale of Henry’s stock in trade in Weybridge in March 1761 (The Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer 5-7 March 1761). The edition of the same newspaper for 11-13 November 1760‚ reported that on the previous Tuesday Henry Scott had been arrested for stabbing James Buck of Weybridge and John Gale, the Constable of Weybridge, and was committed to the New Gaol in Southwark. At the time of the sale Henry must have still been in prison; The London Evening Post of 2-4 April 1761 reported that his trial at the Kingston Assizes had been postponed as the Constable was still very ill and more likely to die than recover. We have so far failed to find a record of his trial or its outcome.

It has not so far been possible to trace a will for either of the Scott brothers. James’ burial is recorded in 1770 in the registers of St Nicholas Church, Chiswick with a note that he was buried inside the church; a Mrs Scott, probably his wife, was buried in 1758, also in the church. This suggests that they were of some standing in the parish.

Find out about the pots in which pineapples were served at table on the Spode History Blog

See also Martin Hopkinson “Gardeners’ Trade Cards by William Kilburn and Francois Vivares”, Print Quarterly XXXV, 2018, 4

The Chiswick Nursery: Scott, Williams, Glendinning

The Chiswick nursery where later Thornton Road was built, was established by James Scott in the 1740s and managed by, amongst others, Richard Williams (of Williams Pear fame) and Robert Glendinning.

The L-shaped 8-acre plot, shown shaded in peach on Milne’s Land Use Map of 1800, was cultivated by a series of important 18th and 19th century gardeners. Today the Victorian houses of Thornton and Mayfield Avenues run across the land.

The Chiswick Nursery was established in about 1740 by James Scott,and became famous for its pineapples, a great test of the nurseryman’s skill. Scott supplied the first pineapples to be fruited in Scotland from here. His ‘stoves’ or heated greenhouses for raising pineapples were highly recommended as were his cauliflower seeds.


Scott’s elegant trade card advertises his famous pineapples and also the stoves, fire walls and frames he could supply for forcing fruit. Scott died in 1770 and his nursery passed into other hands; after 1776 Roberson and Hodson (or Hudson) were running it, though no information has been traced about their garden work.

By 1784 Richard Williams was running it; he was to remain for over forty years. He specialised in heathers and introduced many new plants from the Cape of Good Hope, from Australia and America.

He  propagated the Salopian Pippin, an apple which may have originated on his Shropshire estate at Hadnoll. This was commended by Hugh Ronalds, the Brentford nurseryman, in his book, Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis, published in 1832.

Williams pear from a print which accompanied Hooker’s presentation of the fruit to the RHS, 1816

Williams is known today because he propagated the Williams Pear. He developed a sapling obtained from a Berkshire schoolmaster to a quality and reliability that saw William Hooker recommend it to a meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1816. Hooker called it the Williams Bon Chretien.
The quality and reliability of this variety saw it increasingly cultivated in England and across the world. It is still widely grown and is also known in America as the Bartlett Pear. The eau de vie, Poire William, produced mainly in Alsace, and the similar liqueur from the former Yugoslavia, viljamovka, still use Mr Williams’ name and are frequently produced with a pear grown inside the bottle.

The history of the nursery is obscure for a few years after Williams’ death in 1830. The detail in the newspaper advertisement shown here suggests that the nursery had become predominantly a fruit-growing ground.

The newscutting is preserved in a scrap book in Chiswick Local Studies collection and is annotated with the date of 1837. A little research by Simon Francis has pinned it down to the Morning Chronicle where it was also advertised on the day before the sale. A John Graham seems to have been at the nursery from 1836 until Robert Glendinning took it over in 1843, so it seems odd that the plants should have been sold off so soon after he took over when the nursery was to continue, unless, perhaps, the executors had debts to pay. It is possible, however, that having arranged to take over the land, he had to bid separately for the stock on the ground.

Glendinning was born in Lanark in 1805 and had been working on the estate at Bicton in the West Country in the 1830s. He was already an experienced gardener when he took on the Chiswick Nursery. He re-organised his Chiswick Nursery and installed new hothouses. He was sufficiently confident about its future to issue a long advertisement in The Gardeners’ Chronicle in December 1843 announcing the improvements and seeking business.

Glendinning’s horticultural interests were wide-ranging. He grew heathers and had a high reputation for conifers and fruit trees. He  was an active member of the Horticultural Society of London whose gardens in Chiswick were about 10 minutes’ walk from his nursery. His Practical Hints on the Culture of Pineapples was published in 1839 and he donated a copy to the library at the Horticultural Society’s Chiswick gardens where he was commissioned to redesign the arboretum. Amongst many articles which he wrote for the Journal of the Horticultural Society was one on transplanting large trees in 1849, and he published The Pinetum, a list of conifers, 10 years later. Many other articles followed and he won numerous RHS awards. Robert Fortune’s third expedition to China supplied him with imported plants including rhododendrons.

By the time of his death in 1862 Glendinning had become so firmly established locally that he was one of the Chiswick Improvement Commissioners. His wife and sons continued the business for nine years after he died until it was taken over by Henry Ewen, Nurseryman and Florist. The 1881 Census lists The Ewen family, and describes Mr Ewen as employing 5 men and 34 boys. The 25″ OS map of about 1870 shows the extensive garden grounds but they were to become a building site as Chiswick was absorbed into London’s western suburbs.

updated 16 August 2023