Gardeners A-E – Nurserygardeners.com

The Blinde Family of Barnes

When a researcher approached the Barnes & Mortlake History Society seeking information on a family of Barnes gardeners named Blinde or Blind I was asked whether I could help. The inquirer was following up a mention of a Mr Joseph Blinde, gardener at Barnes, in the first edition of Philip Miller’s Gardeners’ Dictionary (1731). Blinde had found growing wild in Barnes a double-flowered form of Saxifraga Granulata (Meadow Saxifrage), ‘transplanted it into his garden and afterwards distributed it to several curious persons; since which time it hath been multiplied so much, as to become a very common plant in most gardens near London, where it is commonly planted in pots, to adorn court-yards &c in the Spring’.

Who was Joseph Blinde? Miller’s mention of him suggests that he had some standing in contemporary horticultural circles. The original inquirer had shared two wills [i] from the Surrey History Centre. One was for a Joseph Blinde of Barnes and its contents suggested that this was probably the man who found the double-flowered Saxifrage.

Though a Blinde family archive does not appear to have survived, as is the case for most 17th / 18th century gardeners, it may be possible to discover his name in some of his customers’ accounts in order to understand the size of his business. Information from other researchers is welcome.

When James Wisdom and I studied the accounts kept by Arthur Palmer, the steward to Lord Fauconberg of Sutton Court in Chiswick, we found several payments to a ‘Mr Blind’. The first was in October 1693 ‘for plants’ at £3.10s and in the same month the waterman, John Hearn, was paid 7 shillings ‘for bringing 56 trees from Mr Blind’. Another £8 was paid for two bills ‘for plants’ in August 1698 and £2 ‘for hollies’ the following September. A year later, in October 1699, £6 was paid for 8 hollies [ii]. Joseph Blinde’s hollies may have been particularly fine, though Fauconberg had purchased them in the 1680s from other suppliers.

The marriage of this Joseph Blinde and Elizabeth White, both ‘of Barnes’, took place at St Mildred Poultry in the City of London in 1687, but it was the Barnes parish registers (available online) that recorded their children’s baptisms. The first I traced was a daughter, also Elizabeth, baptised in June 1689 but buried in August 1690, the same year in which her brother, John, was baptised and buried. Two more daughters and a son were born in the 1690s, all dying in infancy. After a long gap, another Elizabeth was baptised in 1708, then Mary who lived from 1710 to 1714. Only this second Elizabeth seems to have survived into adulthood.

Nursery gardens were family businesses so the two Elizabeths, mother and daughter, would have worked alongside Joseph. After his wife died in 1732 he wrote his own will the following year [iii]. His witnesses included father and son, Edward and John Courtney. Edward’s will shows he was a Barnes barber and perriwig-maker who bequeathed a house and garden with an arbour, a pump-well and a necessary house (or privy) plus adjoining garden ground. Was he one of Joseph’s customers or simply a local friend?

Joseph Blind’s shaky signature on his will of 1733 (Lambeth Palace Library VH 96-272 a)

Joseph left his entire estate to his beloved daughter, Elizabeth – freehold and copyhold land in Barnes, garden stock, household goods, money and personal property. She could sell part of his Barnes freehold property if necessary to pay the entry fine on the copyhold property but he surely expected her to continue running his garden grounds. In April 1738, at St Luke’s Chelsea, she had married another gardener, William Blows; the note confirming the grant of probate written on her father’s will in February 1740 confirms that she was now Elizabeth Blows.

Where had Joseph gained his expertise? Probably from his father, gardener William Blinde Snr, who died aged 63 in 1693. One of the witnesses to William’s will [iv] was Richard Pearson, the Mortlake schoolmaster; according to John H Harvey’s Early Nurserymen (1974) Pearson was related to a family of Hoxton gardeners and two of his sons were apprenticed to gardeners. Online family history records show that William had married Anne Node, both described as ‘of Barnes’, at St Andrew Holborn in 1651, though he was buried in the Quaker Burying Ground in Hammersmith [v]. His will in Lambeth Palace Library was made on 14 May, when he was ill, and proved on the 25th. He left the residue of his estate to Anne and their son Joseph ‘share and share alike’. They were to benefit from his garden grounds and stock for their natural lives and Joseph’s children were to inherit his share should he die before his mother. This would ensure that the business continued with a prosperous future.

William Snr made money bequests to his other sons, John and William, and to his daughter, Love. She had married Nathaniel Snignall, with whom she had two children, but she was widowed by the time her father died. John had married Mary Partridge, both ‘of Barnes’ at St Mildred Poultry in the City of London in 1686. He was working garden grounds in Brompton, Kensington, and took on apprentices there in 1712 (John Edsar) and 1723 (Henry Stevenson). He died in 1729.

Maisie Brown wrote up the 1693 inventory of William Blinde Snr’s estate in the June 1992 issue of the Barnes & Mortlake History Society Newsletter. It described Blinde’s house as having a parlour, kitchen, buttery, main bed-chamber and a long chamber for the servants. His well-furnished parlour had a clock, 14 pewter dishes and an ample supply of table linen. The house contents plus £10 ‘in cash and debts owing to him’ were valued at £34.12s.6d while his garden stock, listed separately, was valued at £139.18s.0d, a substantial sum.

Maisie Brown wrote: “His nursery stocked apple, pear, cherry, lime, elm, plane and walnut trees, together with crab apple, plum, cherry and pear stocks for grafting. They were valued at nearly £32. Other items such as large quantities of holly, yew, juniper, myrtle, laurel, box, fir and cypress came to £50. The main interest of the inventory lies, however, in the highly specialised list of plants which at the time were rarities. Whilst ‘all the ordinary sorts of flowers’ are lumped together as a single item valued at £5, the rarer beauties are carefully listed and valued in total at £55. These were ‘tulups, emanayes, junkquills, renonkalists, arickaleses, polyantayes and jelly flowers’, or, as we know them today, tulips, anemones, jonquils, ranunculus, auriculas, polyanthus and carnations. All were either relative newcomers from abroad or native flowers which had been improved in colour and form.”

So the nursery held a good range of fruit trees and plants for the kitchen garden, shrubs and trees for the pleasure garden, including hedging plants for formal garden designs, and expensive flowering plants – some relatively recently introduced from overseas.

Elizabeth Blows drafted her will in November 1757. Her witnesses included the Mortlake schoolmasters, Jonathan and John Wild Tomlinson. Her husband was her primary heir and her executor. She left him Barnes properties held in her own name (probably those inherited from her father, Joseph) – Rose House with its garden (which still stands) and the Peaked Acre in West Field (then occupied by Richard Clemenshaw) – with both to go to their daughter, another Elizabeth, after her father’s death.

Barnes Terrace with malthouses, Thames Panorama of 1829

She also left her husband freehold tenements and a malt-house on Barnes Wharf. In the first draft of her will Elizabeth left him another 5 acres of copyhold land in Windmill Field but in a codicil written a few days later offered him the alternative of a messuage and 3 acres called Gibbons Close, then occupied by Samuel Taylor and Abigail Partington.

Barnes West Field sketch map which records Peaked Acre as ‘Piked Acre’

Elizabeth’s widower lived until 1768. Their son William, born in 1745, was listed as a gardener in the Jury-Qualified Freeholders and Copyholders Lists [vi] with property in Barnes in 1770. He was also recorded in the London Poll Books [vii] in 1774, with property in Barnes which he owned and occupied. However, by 1780 he was resident in Isleworth and his Barnes property was occupied by Abraham Ayton, a Brentford maltster.

In May 1786 The European Magazine recorded William Blows, market gardener and seedsman of Isleworth, as a newly-declared bankrupt so this was probably the end of this gardening business. William died aged 71 and was buried at All Saints Isleworth in 1816, where his most recent residence was recorded in the register as St Dunstans.

This is an expanded version of the article published in the Barnes & Mortlake History Society Newsletter 236, March 2021, from which the sketch map is taken

[i] QS3/10A/1–9. Digitized images. Surrey History Centre

[ii] North Yorks Record Office, ref ZDV V 10

[iii] Surrey History Centre, information from original inquirer

[iv] Surrey History Centre, information from original inquirer

[v] TNA RG6/499

[vi] Freeholders Lists 1696–1824. QS3/10A/1–9 Surrey History Centre

[vii] London Metropolitan Archives

John Asslett, Nurseryman of Old Brentford

John Asslett died on 29 November 1748 and the inventory of his property was completed by 19 January 1749 (1). In Old Brentford, the southern half of Ealing Parish, most of the nursery gardens lay between the High Street (the road between London and the West) and the area to the north now crossed by the M4. Locating Asslett’s grounds has proved difficult, despite a search of Middlesex Deeds Registry indexes, since the Ealing manorial records for 1722 – 1791 do not survive.

extract from Rocque’s map of the Environs of London, surveyed 1741-45

The Ealing parish rate-books (2) list a Mr Asslett from 1707 which may be ‘our’ John. His father may well be the John Asslett, gardener of Isleworth, who married Anne Burt in 1693. The man who died in 1748 is almost certainly the John Asslett who married Elizabeth Swallow at Ealing on 5 February 1719 and probably also John Asslett the younger, Isleworth gardener, who paid duty on 2 May 1723 on taking John Robearts apprentice (3). The family were still in the area in 1760 when Thomas Asslett of Ealing, perhaps ‘our’ John’s grandson, married Sarah, daughter of gardener Nicholas Compton of Chiswick (4).

John Asslett’s Inventory
Asslett’s widow, Elizabeth, worked with 6 appraisers, 2 each for the household goods, the property and the garden. They struggled to make sense of John’s accounts and Elizabeth declared his books ‘very ill kept’. A writing desk is listed in the kitchen, where perhaps there were too many distractions for careful book-keeping. Though only able to make her mark (her initials) Elizabeth continued to manage the nursery and sell stock after her husband’s death, a wise decision for the time of year. She wished to keep it going ‘until her customers want new trees’ and stated that ‘if she was immediately to dispose of the same and Clear the Ground she should get little more for the said trees than for firewood which would be a great disadvantage to the Estate’.

The Assletts’ Home
There were 7 rooms plus garretts and a cellar where Edward Millward and James Walsh valued the contents at £34.4s. Glass and pottery in the back parlour included 15 pieces of Delft, but the 19 china cups and 8 saucers were ‘most broken’. The kitchen was well-equipped, with a clock, copper and pewter items and 24 pieces of delft and stoneware. In one of two garretts, besides bedding, were ‘baskets and basket cloths’ for transporting plants or produce.

A second kitchen held 6 ‘tubs or Coolers’, while the cellar had 7 ‘Drink Tubbs’. These and the cider press in the yard suggest that Asslett brewed cider – for the household or for sale – so he probably cultivated apple trees. Also in the yard were 2 water tubs, 3 wheel-barrows, 3 ladders (for picking fruit?), 2 spades, 2 rakes, a scythe, a reel, a grindstone and some firewood. Additional market containers included 6 barges and a dozen each of baskets, sieves and half-sieves, while the seed shop housed potatoes, onions and more seed sieves. The Assletts kept 2 pigs (hence a bacon rack in the kitchen), and the stable housed a cart and a horse. The watch-house in the yard was probably for defence against garden thefts.

Leases and land in the inventory
John Warrilow and John Cheney valued 3 leases of land, on one of which stood 3 houses. A John Warrilow was a Hammersmith publican at this date but no link to the Assletts has been traced. John Cheney was a gardener. He died in 1758, making a bequest (5) to his daughter, Elizabeth, who had married James Asslett – ‘nurseryman’ in his marriage bond (6) – at Ealing the previous year. So Cheney was helping a fellow gardener’s widow to administer her late husband’s probate, a decade before they became related by the marriage of his daughter to her son.

Three acres described as ‘Poors’ Ground’ had cost Asslett £3.10s per acre; though there were 17 years left on the lease this was deemed to have no value. Charitable bequests of land were thus described in the nearby parishes of Isleworth and Hanwell, but not in Brentford, making this difficult to locate. Asslett’s lease of 3 acres of land with 3 houses – the largest of which was his family’s home – cost him £30 a year. There were 14 years left to run on this lease but it was valued at only £4, even though he was sub-letting the other houses at £10 and £5 a year respectively. Asslett had been paying £14.10s a year for a further 4½a 34p of land – the 10 years left on this lease were valued at £1.14s.0d. The leases covered approximately 12¾ acres but whether these were copyhold or freehold land is unclear.

In the garden ground
Richard Butt and Thomas Ash (7) appraised the garden stock and tools. Richard Butt ran the Kew Nursery across the Thames and was known for his early Butt’s Hotspur Pea. Thomas Ash was a Twickenham nurseryman whose family’s holdings included garden ground in the Common Field adjoining Walpole’s Strawberry Hill estate. Trees were his speciality and perhaps the reason for his involvement as valuer (8). In the seed shop they listed tools and baskets along with ‘some potatoes’ and ‘some onions’, presumably seed stock for the business. Otherwise, the appraisers spent little time on this task, offering only a statement that Asslett’s ‘trees, greens and roots’ were worth £122.17s.0d.

Asslett’s debts
There are 3 lists of debtors which offer some insight into his customers. The first has 9 payments ‘recently received’ to cover £15.7s.8d of book debts. Of these only John Cheney can be identified as a gardener, so most others were probably purchasing for their own gardens.

The second lists 29 debts worth £37.12s.10d and also relates to sales made since Asslett’s death. This may provide evidence of the turnover of a tree nursery during the winter months, or the pattern of sales may have been unusual as purchasers tried either to help Mrs Asslett out with a little extra income, or came looking for bargains after her husband’s death. Amongst the names in this list Cheney, Butt and Ash (‘Aysh’) re-appear. Others are recognisable as gardeners. Mr Gray is probably from the Fulham gardening family of that nane and ‘Brient’ is probably William Bryant, a Strand on the Green gardener. ‘Cornel (Colonel?) Ronals’ is probably Hugh Ronalds, a Scots gardener who had recently set up his nursery in Brentford.

The Greenings had a long-established nursery at Brentford End, where Brentford town extended west of the Brent into Isleworth parish. Thomas Greening the Elder (1684-1757) would merit ‘Esquire’ as a royal contractor, though he had retired in the mid-1740s to a house and small garden ground at Turnham Green, leased from Lord Burlington. His sons, the eldest of whom, also Thomas, is probably ‘Mr Greening’ in the list, then ran the nursery and oversaw the family’s royal and other contracts.

The third list itemises 49 debts totalling £102.3s.7d, some deemed ‘irrecoverable’. Most were for less than £5, but 4 gardeners owed significantly larger sums, the £47.16s.9d owed by Greening Esq, representing almost half the total. Letters from the Greening sons to their father in the 1730s (9) show the financial difficulties facing their business while they waited for years for payment of large sums due from royal and aristocratic contracts. Mr Gray, the Fulham gardener in the second list, is the next largest debtor here, owing £23.19s.9d. Mr Teems, owing the third largest sum of £23.1s.10d, was Henry Teem, who left the 4-acre Home Nursery in Isleworth to his widow in 1762 (10) while Henry Woodman, who owed £16.4s.7d, was a Strand on the Green nurseryman (11). Mr Thompson, owing £4.15s. may be Joseph Thompson, a New Brentford gardener (12).

A few others in the third list can also be identified as gardeners. The Clements family (‘Clemmons’) appears. John Clements, a specialist bricklayer, worked on Lord Fauconberg’s gardens at Sutton Court in Chiswick in the 1690s (13) and one of his sons, Richard, was an Isleworth gardener. Another son, Benjamin Clements, witnessed the will of Asslett’s appraiser, Thomas Ash. Thomas Spyers, owing £3.8s.0d, is one of few debtors whose forename is given, distinguishing him from other gardeners in his family; he had garden grounds in Isleworth, Twickenham and Brentford. His brother was a debtor to nurseryman Peter Mason (14), while Joshua Spyers, probably his nephew, became Surveyor to Hampton Court. ‘Hearne Esquire’, who owed 12s.10d, may be Thomas Hearne (d 1782), a Strand on the Green gardener. The remaining debtors include local residents purchasing for themselves. One was a Scots surgeon, James Bethune (‘Bethuen’ in the list), living in New Brentford. His will reveals him to have been a friend of James Scott, a fellow Scotsman who ran the Chiswick Nursery .

The debts relate specifically to Asslett’s nursery trade; unlike other local men’s inventories with lists of debts, there are no bills or promissory notes. However, despite recording debts, he was probably not chasing them actively enough for his wife’s satisfaction.

Summary
This inventory reveals something of the mid-18th century social and business community in which gardeners operated in this part of Middlesex. They bought and sold each other’s stock, and ties of marriage and friendship strengthened their business connections. Asslett’s property, including his debts, totalled £321.13.6d and he had about 12½ acres of land. The detail about his household goods, compared with the light description of the garden stock, suggests a comfortable but not lavish home which his widow still occupied and described herself.

His debts, worth much more than his household goods, demonstrate the difficulties suffered by many 18th century businesses due to the practice of buying on credit with debts unpaid for years at a time. While his books were not well managed, he was literate and had kept sufficient accounts for debts to be listed and payment claimed. The debtors’ lists shows Asslett working as both a retail and a wholesale nurseryman; his nursery stock must have been of a reliable quality for other significant gardeners to be purchasers.

Elizabeth Asslett’s good sense and garden expertise is clear from her judgement that her husband managed his accounts poorly and from her decision to continue trading, perhaps providing a future for her son. Many gardeners’ wills record bequests of garden grounds, tools and stock-in-trade to widows and relatives, confirming that these were truly family businesses, relying on the involvement of entire households.

Sources
1 TNA, PROB 3/48/2, and J H Harvey, Early Nurserymen, p 82
2 Index at Local History Centre, L B Ealing
3 TNA, Board of Stamps: Apprenticeship Books, Series IR , piece 9 (via Ancestry.com)
4 TNA, PROB 11/858 will of Nicholas Compton
5 TNA PROB 11/837 will of John Cheney
6 London Metropolitan Archives DL/A/24/MS10091E/70 via Ancestry.com
7 see Early Nurserymen, which states that Butt was working the Kew nursery in 1731-1751
8 TNA PROB 11/5683. Rocque’s 1745 map shows this plot as a dense thicket of trees. However, the Ash family grew a wider variety of plants in other garden grounds; for example TNA PROB 11/1458, the will of William Ash mentions his “nursery of Trees Shrubs Flowers and other kind of Plants now planted . . . upon . . . three Acres of Copyhold Land”
9 TNA, C108/353, Greening letters
10 TNA, PROB 11/881 will of Henry Teem
11 J H Harvey, Early Nurserymen, Appendix vii has transcripts of Woodman’s letters. See also Val Bott, ‘Some Strand on the Green Gardeners’ in Brentford & Chiswick Local History Journal 18 (2009)
12 TNA PROB 11/869 will of Joseph Thompson
13 North Yorkshire Record Office, Fauconberg’s Steward’s accounts 1685-1708, ZDV v 10
14 J H Harvey, Early Nurserymen, p. 81
15 TNA PROB 11/932 will of James Bethune

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 Hogarth's House — 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.

ranbypicextract1 — 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.

HoHo1880s — 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.

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE — 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.

EXGP3.5 — 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.

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 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 RHS1816 — 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