{"id":70,"date":"2010-08-14T08:31:52","date_gmt":"2010-08-14T07:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/?p=70"},"modified":"2011-07-18T15:59:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T15:59:24","slug":"nicholas-parker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"Nicholas Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Parker<\/strong><\/p>\n

The accounts kept by the Earl of Fauconberg\u2019s steward, Arthur Palmer, record substantial expenditure on the Earl\u2019s new gardens at Sutton Court, Chiswick between 1685 and 1700. The name of Nicholas Parker recurs regularly in Palmer\u2019s account book. Parker supplied plants, sometimes in large quantities, for the Sutton Court garden. Almost all of the payments made to Nicholas Parker or Mr Parker are for the supply of \u201ctrees\u201d with only one entry for \u201cplants\u201d. A few entries are more specific, listing \u201cew\u201d, 300 hornbeams and 38 phillireas, and in 1685 alone Mr Parker was paid the substantial sum of \u00a317 for fruit trees. Separately, \u201cGoodman Parker\u201d appears against payments of \u00a319.2s and \u00a350 for carpentry, with a further \u00a317 for \u201cdigging and wharfing a new pond\u201d.\u00a0 It is probable that Goodman Parker was Nicholas Senior, father to the gardener.<\/p>\n

So far it has not been possible to identify exactly where all of the Parkers\u2019 properties lay.\u00a0 Nicholas Parker Senior appears in the rate books on Strand on the Green from around 1660; he signed his name as a member of the vestry in 1675 and died in December 1714. Nicholas Parker Junior was not rated identifiably by that name until about 1690. In 1699 he served as churchwarden and in 1709 made a donation of \u00a31 towards work on the north aisle of the parish church. By 1719 he is paying rates on property worth \u00a338 and land in Sutton Field worth \u00a316, almost certainly having taken over land which his father occupied.<\/p>\n

Given the quantities of trees supplied to Fauconberg, Nicholas Parker was already a substantial nurseryman by the 1680s, though he does not appear in Harvey\u2019s very comprehensive book, Early Nurserymen.<\/em> Fortunately a will of June 1725 made by Nicholas Parker of Strand on the Green, \u201cGardiner\u201d, has survived. In it he requested that he should be buried near his late father at St Nicholas Church, Chiswick.<\/p>\n

Though no reference is made in the will to a wife, he seems to have been married twice. His first wife, Elizabeth, was buried in 1688 at St Nicholas; on 11 December 1693 the marriage is recorded between Nicholas Parker, gent, widower, and Mrs Jane Goodwin, widow, by Canterbury licence.<\/p>\n

From the lists of Chiswick burials, she may have been the widow of Henry Goodwin, buried in linen in 1687\/8, or of another Henry Goodwin buried in 1690. The wealthiest of the Goodwins was living at Sutton Court in 1719. And there were Goodwins who were gardeners, who owned land north of Chiswick High Road, near today’s Chiswick roundabout. There were\u00a0 Brentford Goodwins as well, including a basket-maker.<\/p>\n

In 1709 Nicholas Parker Junior is named by George Warner of Turnham Green as one of two executors \u201cwhich I esteem as my loving friends\u201d. Parker\u2019s social status as a gentleman is further confirmed by his own \u201cgood friends\u201d mentioned in the will. He leaves a guinea each for mourning rings for Mr Thomas and Mr George Barker and appoints another, Thomas Mawson, as executor. The Barkers had owned The Grove estate in Chiswick since the middle ages and its land adjoined Vernon Cottage. Mawson had property on the Strand and owned the brewery which was the predecessor of today\u2019s Griffin Brewery. His family was also comfortably off, and one of his brothers was Bishop of Chichester.<\/p>\n

Parker\u2019s bequests reveal him to be a man of property with copyhold houses and land in Turnham Green, Little Sutton and Strand on the Green, held of the manor of Sutton Court, and two freeholds in Catherine Wheel Yard, New Brentford. The freeholds secured the right to vote, and a Nicholas Parker is listed in the 1710 Middlesex Poll Book. At this date Nicholas Parker Senior was still alive so these properties may have come to our gardener as a bequest from his father. The will also includes two properties at Strand on the Green, one with six acres and the other with half an acre of land which Parker occupied himself.<\/p>\n

William Compton, Parker\u2019s \u201ckinsman\u201d and one of his executors, inherited most of the property, including a house with five and a half acres of gardens at the downstream end of Strand on the Green, then let to Joseph Miller, the comic actor. Miller leased this house, later named Vernon Cottage,\u00a0 from 1686 to his death in 1738.\u00a0 And when Nicholas Compton died in 1760, describing himself as gardener in his will, he bequeathed a house with five and a half acres of gardens which he himself occupied, confirming that this was the house he had inherited. Vernon Cottage is clearly labelled on Leigh\u2019s 1831 Panorama of the Thames<\/em>, just downstream of the Strand, with a walled garden and at least one glasshouse. William Compton took on responsibility for his brother Nicholas\u2019 five daughters and later left garden grounds to the oldest of them in his own will.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Along with \u00a35 for the poor of Strand on the Green, Parker\u2019s will provided \u00a0annuities for various relatives as well as bequests of \u00a350, \u00a3100 or \u00a3200 to a number of friends and relatives:\u00a0 Elizabeth Parker \u201cnow living with me\u201d, Mary and Ellen Parker, William Goodwin of Shepperton, Thomas Goodwin of Laleham, Katharine and Eleanor Compton of Turnham Green. Parker often uses the word \u201ckinsman\u201d to describe these heirs, suggesting that they may have been his wives\u2019 relations rather than his blood relatives. William Compton\u2019s will reveals that Katharine and Eleanor were the sisters of himself and Nicholas Compton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,47,19],"tags":[71,74,73,69,22,72,42,43],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chiswick-gardeners","category-gardeners-l-p","category-strand-on-the-green-gardeners","tag-earl-of-fauconberg","tag-eleanor-woodman","tag-henry-woodman","tag-nicholas-parker","tag-strand-on-the-green","tag-sutton-court-estate","tag-william-compton","tag-women-gardeners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577,"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}