Published in Windlesora 10 (1991)
© WLHG
The following letter was published in the November 28th, 1874 edition of The Gardener’s Chronicle. The writer is a ‘J. Morris of Plumstead Common’, who had worked as a labourer on the Royal estates in Windsor for some forty-five years at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Having seen in your paper, lent me by a gardener here two or three weeks since, a portrait of my old fellow-workman, Mr Drewitt, also an account of Windsor Park and other places where I have toiled many a cold and hot day, I send for your information some of the sayings and doings of those bygone days, having been employed for full forty-five years with no less than fifty or sixty other rough labourers on the Royal estates , and in forming, in the time of George IV, rides and
drives and making plantations in Windsor Park, at Virginia Water and the Cumberland and Royal Lodges, illustrations of which I saw in the paper lent me.
…I had read to me your account of the ruins at Virginia Water. Now, I was there when they were brought from abroad and actually helped to unload them, and Thomson [Under Gardener], with a young Scotchman named Morrison, who afterwards went to the West Indies as gardener, actually planted the plants now growing on the part you show in the three-sided form of the temple with plants on it. I distinctly remember Thomson, who was then a smart, active young man (I ought to say a full-grown boy), being sent down by Mr William Aiton’, who used to call him “My boy John”, to plant the shrubs on the top of those columns, and from their great height I well remember Thomson, when I had placed the ladder for him to go up, shaking like an aspen leaf, as we call it. I, with several labourers, had carried the soil up some days before; therefore if you desire to give a correct account to the world you should ask Thomson, if living, to give it, as I know he did a good deal of the writing for the gardens, copies of which were always sent to the
Government offices.
Thomson could also give you, if inclined, an account of the date that the first tree was cut down on the island where the fishing temple stands, as he, by desire of Mr Aiton, with what we call a razor, marked, in the presence of George IV and the Marchioness of Coningham by his side, the very first tree to be cut down, it then being a dense island of Larch and other Fir trees from 40 to 60 feet in height; and he continued to mark them under George I’V’s direction, and Mr Aiton and myself and at least forty or fifty rough labourers with axes went to work, as was the custom, until nearly enough trees were cut down in the presence of the King and Marchioness of Coningham to form a space nearly sufficient for the fishing temple and garden; and well do I remember a remarkable circumstance which took place on the same occasion. It was as follows: The King with the Marchioness by his side desired Mr Aiton to ride on horseback, as he always did when out with the King, to a place in the park called Belvidere, but Mr Aiton not understanding him went to another place in the park, called Cranbourne Lodge; and when the King returned, Aiton’s boy John was staking a road that turned out of the main road to the island, and the King, thinking the turn not quite right, ordered the boy John to remove some of the stakes; and Thomson not placing them just where he wanted them, and being a little confused and nervous and not catching his idea, I suppose desired to get out of the job, and Mr Nitchell coming that way he said, “Your Majesty, Mr Nitchell is near, shall I call him?” “You—fool!” was his reply; and the boy John was soon out of sight in the wood, by which means he got out of his trouble. Mr Nitchell was the Head Gardener to George IV at the Royal Lodge, and for a long time the boy John was called the royal fool by us all…..”
It was the custom with Mr Aiton previous to the young gardeners, as improvers, being sent to Kew, to be sent with we navvies to help to form the rides and drives in the park, to learn what he called ground-work, and on these occasions there might be eight or ten of these chaps with us roughs. I can name some – John Mann, afterward director of Hyde Park; James Drewitt, Fentiman, William Gaw, and Henry Gore and many others whom I do not recollect. The case was this. We had all been working at Virginia Water for a week or more, when an order came from Mr Nitchell for all to go to work in the Royal Lodge gardens, and each had to take the wheelbarrow he had been using home to the Royal Lodge, a distance of nearly 3 miles – no joke after a hard day’s work. Of course all obeyed but Thomson, and Drewitt, seeing Thomson walking by his side with his hands in his pockets, he (Drewitt) wheeling the barrow, said to the boy John, “Why don’t you take a barrow?” His reply was that “the order only applied to labourers like him”; and I shall never forget the flare-up. Drewitt, a big rough Staffordshire chap, threatened to kick the boy, and had the threat been carried out, I, with forty or fifty others, would have enjoyed the fun. What would your fine-fingered young gardeners think of roughing it as we did? It was quite a gipsy’s life without a tent to shelter us. There was no lodging nearer than Englefield Green 2½ miles from our work; therefore we used to carry our “grub” or “nose-bag” with us, and each of us had a basin with a little coffee and sugar; and a man was allowed to go an hour before breakfast and dinner time to put on two 4-gallon kettles of water, put each man’s lot of coffee into the kettles; and in the wood, like so many gypsies, we used to sit on faggots to sup our coffee – hail, rain, blow or snow.
This was the training your John Manns, Drewitts and Thomsons had, and others had for a start in life, and some of whom I suppose, if any are living, would pass me by, as the priests of old did the man by the way-side. I also see you give an account of the Windsor Castle gardens. Now a little correct information may be of service to you on this subject. Now this was all laid out by Thomson under the direction of Mr Nitchell, from plans prepared by Mr Aiton and the American shrubs were brought, removed and planted under Thomson’s superintendence, as I helped to dig the holes to receive the trees after they were brought from the Duke of Marlborough’s sale at Whiteknights near Reading. The way they were bought was as follows: Mr Aiton took his boy John down to Whiteknights some days before the sale, and marked the lots for him to purchase; the boy attended the sale and made the purchases, and remained there for fully three or four weeks, until all were removed to the Castle gardens, where I believe they are still to be seen
growing.
You have also omitted a very interesting part – the orangery under the terrace in the Castle gardens – the trees were a present from one of the kings of France to George IV. Thomson went to France to take charge of them until they were delivered by barge at Windsor. I remember Thomson saying what a rough journey he had, being obliged to bring them in a sailing vessel, as there was no steam vessels going to France in those days.
I have forgotten to tell you that all I and the young gardeners had to live upon and pay house-rent and lodging out of wages was 12s per week, and at that time bread was 9d per loaf, meat about the same price per Ib; tea 7s per 1b, sugar 7d per Ib, coffee 4s per 1b; and mighty as the two Manns, Drewitts, the “Royal fool” and others became in aftertime, my purse was as well furnished as theirs on the pay-night with 12s. During this time I resided at a place near Egham called the Sandpits and near to a butcher’s shop kept by a fine old English character called Jackson, and part of John Mann’s and the boy John’s time they lodged there, which, like cows in clover, was a clover field for them, as Jackson used to say to his wife, who was a thorough, kindhearted woman, “I have some waste fat – do give them poor gardeners a good nose-bag to start the week with”.
This brings an incident to my recollection, as my memory is still good, although I have past the time alloted on earth to man, with shaking feet and hands, but still with a sound roof – as no tile, as the saying is, is yet removed or off. It was on one of these occasions when gipsying about the Temple gardens at Virginia Water, when the boy John, as was customary with him — he being like a king of the Cannibal Islands among us roughs when round the gipsies’ fire, exalted on his throne — namely a large faggot of wood — was reading to us labourers, Drewitt and others, that he related a story told to him by Mr Jones, then gardener to the Duke of Marlborough at Whiteknights. Thomson was there, as I said before, to remove the trees purchased by him for the Windsor gardens, and being a decent chap, I suppose remained in Jones’ house, and in the course of an evening’s gossip Jones related the following story: Jones with Mr Knight, afterwards the great nurseryman in the King’s Road, Chelsea, worked in Lee’s nursery of Hammersmith, and both lived in the bothie. In the year of the great Irish row, I think called the Rebellion, or some such name in 1799, at which time bread was 2s a loaf; and Jones’ story was that as they had only 10s per week, he was obliged to allowance his quantity for every meal. He used, he said, to cut the loaf into four parts, and after taking one for breakfast, throw the next quarter into a watering pot of water to swell for dinner; and Mrs Jones being his second wife and a person of some property, had no idea that young gardeners went through such hardships, exclaimed in the presence of the boy John, “Oh, my dear Jones, did you go through and suffer all this'”.
‘I send you these accounts of what young gardeners went through fifty years ago, many of them having become by good conduct and perseverance such as Sir Joseph Paxton, John Mann, Knight, Drewitt, Thomson, and others who have become great men in their profession; and any, if living, who were my fellow workmen at that time must know I have given a faithful account of our hardships, and will be pleased to see these old stories and times brought to their recollection.’
Notes
- William Townsend Aiton was appointed chief gardener of the Royal Gardens at Kew in place of his father in 1793. At various times during the next century, he held similar posts at Richmond, Kensington, St James and Carlton House and, on the accession of George IV, was put in charge of the extensive alterations made in the Great Park and Gardens at Windsor.
- 1797-8, when there was an Irish rising coupled with an abortive French invasion.
Windsor Local History Group 