The Garden History Society

The Allotment Movement in England, 1793-1873 by Jeremy BurchardtReview by: Elizabeth LebasGarden History, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 109-110Published by: The Garden History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1587406 .

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REVIEWS REVIEWS

Graham Stuart Thomas, Recollections of Great Gardeners (London: Frances Lincoln, 2003), 256 pp., illus. in black-and-white, ?15.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7112-2288-6.

Recollections of Great Gardeners was Graham Stuart Thomas's final book, published posthumously, after his death in April 2003, having just celebrated his ninety-fourth birthday. His selection of 'Great Gardeners' features the twentieth century and spans the middle years when Thomas himself was already a well-known and much sought-after figure. A remark- able man and a brilliant and eminently knowledge- able horticulturist and plantsman, he had had a passionate devotion to gardening for over eighty years of his life. (He was also Vice-President of the Garden History Society.)

Recollections is a compact, charming and rather unique book giving a fascinating insight into the people and gardens that were becoming centre stage in twentieth-century garden-making. It covers over sixty properties throughout the British Isles, and these are all of Thomas's selection, chosen primarily for the individuals who created or managed them, many of whom he knew as friends or as clients. At least twenty properties include some of the National Trust's finest gardens, including Sissinghurst, Hidcote, Nymans, Sheffield Park and Mottisfont. Thomas advised on then all. He had a special love of Ireland and Irish gardens where he had many friends and garden enthusiasts, and the book includes Mount Usher, Rowallane and Mount Stewart.

A lifetime's accumulated knowledge and experience began with a boyhood passion for plants and gardens that then led Thomas to be a student 'apprentice' at the University of Cambridge Botanic Gardens while still in his late teens. Then followed some 30 years in the nursery trade, mostly in Surrey, where many of the leading nurseries were based in the 1930s. He ended up as Managing Director of Sunningdale Nurseries, where he rapidly built up a reputation as an outstanding plantsman and pioneering specialist on old roses. In 1955, Thomas was invited to be Gardens' Adviser to the National Trust as a part-time post while still at Sunningdale, and he soon found himself advising on several of the Trust's recently acquired gardens, including Blickling, Montacute, Stourhead and Sheffield Park.

John Sales, who worked with Thomas and eventually succeeded him in 1973, has written a delightful and anecdotal Foreword, giving a personal

Graham Stuart Thomas, Recollections of Great Gardeners (London: Frances Lincoln, 2003), 256 pp., illus. in black-and-white, ?15.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7112-2288-6.

Recollections of Great Gardeners was Graham Stuart Thomas's final book, published posthumously, after his death in April 2003, having just celebrated his ninety-fourth birthday. His selection of 'Great Gardeners' features the twentieth century and spans the middle years when Thomas himself was already a well-known and much sought-after figure. A remark- able man and a brilliant and eminently knowledge- able horticulturist and plantsman, he had had a passionate devotion to gardening for over eighty years of his life. (He was also Vice-President of the Garden History Society.)

Recollections is a compact, charming and rather unique book giving a fascinating insight into the people and gardens that were becoming centre stage in twentieth-century garden-making. It covers over sixty properties throughout the British Isles, and these are all of Thomas's selection, chosen primarily for the individuals who created or managed them, many of whom he knew as friends or as clients. At least twenty properties include some of the National Trust's finest gardens, including Sissinghurst, Hidcote, Nymans, Sheffield Park and Mottisfont. Thomas advised on then all. He had a special love of Ireland and Irish gardens where he had many friends and garden enthusiasts, and the book includes Mount Usher, Rowallane and Mount Stewart.

A lifetime's accumulated knowledge and experience began with a boyhood passion for plants and gardens that then led Thomas to be a student 'apprentice' at the University of Cambridge Botanic Gardens while still in his late teens. Then followed some 30 years in the nursery trade, mostly in Surrey, where many of the leading nurseries were based in the 1930s. He ended up as Managing Director of Sunningdale Nurseries, where he rapidly built up a reputation as an outstanding plantsman and pioneering specialist on old roses. In 1955, Thomas was invited to be Gardens' Adviser to the National Trust as a part-time post while still at Sunningdale, and he soon found himself advising on several of the Trust's recently acquired gardens, including Blickling, Montacute, Stourhead and Sheffield Park.

John Sales, who worked with Thomas and eventually succeeded him in 1973, has written a delightful and anecdotal Foreword, giving a personal

and affectionate account of Thomas's remarkable and dedicated achievements in many of the Trust's gardens. These included some of the first restoration projects in the country, such as at Moseley Old Hall and Westbury Court. It was during this period and on his retirement that Thomas found time to write the many authoritative books that have found enthusi- astic readers across the world. Recollections looks back on the many gardens, gardeners and plantsmen that Thomas met or respected, many of whom are also now dead. Beginning with a chapter called 'Overture', Thomas traces the introduction of many new and exciting plants into the gardening world in the twentieth century, many finding homes in the gardens that feature in the main section of the book. It provides a fitting introduction to the personalities and achievements of the 'great gardeners' recalled. These make fascinating reading and really amount to a social history of a gardening society now almost vanished. A love of plants features strongly among those Thomas writes about, as well as eccentrics. Sir Edward Bolitho of Trengwainton, Cornwall, whose main love was trees and shrubs and mainly 'garden- ing above the knee' (he took bulbs and the like for granted); E. A. Bowles, a passionate plantsmen from Enfield, Middlesex, who encouraged a rare moss he found growing out if a crack in his gent's lavatory basin (ladies were taken upstairs); and Maurice Mason of Talbot Manor, Norfolk, whose plant- collecting energy meant 'he went through horticulture like an express train. Few could keep up with him'. For the garden historian, Thomas includes the Husseys of Scotney Castle and Harold Peto of Iford - and many others. It is all very compelling reading.

Thomas's other main relaxation when not in gardens was drawing and painting (the book is illustrated with plates from his classic work The Complete Flower Paintings and Drawings of Graham Stuart Thomas, 1987), and music and singing. Thomas never married, and when discreetly asked why this was so, he replied, 'I never had time'!

TOM WRIGHT

Nyewood Lodge, Nyewood, Rogate, Petersfield Hampshire GU31 SJL, UK

Jeremy Burchardt, The Allotment Movement in England, 1793-1873 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), 287 pp., ?45.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-86193- 256-0.

and affectionate account of Thomas's remarkable and dedicated achievements in many of the Trust's gardens. These included some of the first restoration projects in the country, such as at Moseley Old Hall and Westbury Court. It was during this period and on his retirement that Thomas found time to write the many authoritative books that have found enthusi- astic readers across the world. Recollections looks back on the many gardens, gardeners and plantsmen that Thomas met or respected, many of whom are also now dead. Beginning with a chapter called 'Overture', Thomas traces the introduction of many new and exciting plants into the gardening world in the twentieth century, many finding homes in the gardens that feature in the main section of the book. It provides a fitting introduction to the personalities and achievements of the 'great gardeners' recalled. These make fascinating reading and really amount to a social history of a gardening society now almost vanished. A love of plants features strongly among those Thomas writes about, as well as eccentrics. Sir Edward Bolitho of Trengwainton, Cornwall, whose main love was trees and shrubs and mainly 'garden- ing above the knee' (he took bulbs and the like for granted); E. A. Bowles, a passionate plantsmen from Enfield, Middlesex, who encouraged a rare moss he found growing out if a crack in his gent's lavatory basin (ladies were taken upstairs); and Maurice Mason of Talbot Manor, Norfolk, whose plant- collecting energy meant 'he went through horticulture like an express train. Few could keep up with him'. For the garden historian, Thomas includes the Husseys of Scotney Castle and Harold Peto of Iford - and many others. It is all very compelling reading.

Thomas's other main relaxation when not in gardens was drawing and painting (the book is illustrated with plates from his classic work The Complete Flower Paintings and Drawings of Graham Stuart Thomas, 1987), and music and singing. Thomas never married, and when discreetly asked why this was so, he replied, 'I never had time'!

TOM WRIGHT

Nyewood Lodge, Nyewood, Rogate, Petersfield Hampshire GU31 SJL, UK

Jeremy Burchardt, The Allotment Movement in England, 1793-1873 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), 287 pp., ?45.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-86193- 256-0.

This content downloaded from 144.32.128.14 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 08:11:20 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

GARDEN HISTORY 31:1 GARDEN HISTORY 31:1

The Allotment Movement in England contains one illustration, the frontispiece: it is of a man digging up potatoes while a young woman holding a child looks on. Beyond lies the rear of a small cottage and outhouses - symbols of the domesticity it was hoped allotments would promote. This illustration also served as frontispiece to the 1835 edition of the Labourer's Friend Magazine, the organ of the movement for allotments promoted by London professionals and various members of the rural gentry and aristocracy. Plebian and agrarian, thus, as the author Jeremy Burchardt wryly notes, the antithesis of the picturesque, allotments were rarely depicted in the nineteenth century.

Published under the auspices of the Royal His- torical Society and once a doctoral thesis, this book is the first full-length account of the nineteenth-century allotment movement in England and it also accounts for regional and county variations. What relevance has it got for the garden historian? Primarily, it reminds us that any matters related to land, including designed gardens and landscapes, are objects of social and political struggle. The work identifies three periods of the allotment movement and concentrates on the first two: from the outbreak of the wars with France in 1793 to the agrarian upheavals of the 'Swing Riots' of 1830-31, and from the legislation of the mid-1840s to the first official census on allotments in 1873 when the third period begins.

By the early nineteenth century, landlords having parcelled out their land at fair rent to their labourers (the allotment movement, as the housing movement came from the reforming, not the working or labouring classes) found them growing on what these called their 'little farms' not subsistence food, but wheat as a prestige cash crop and at double their hired productivity. If landlords and parishes saw allotments as a means of staving off starvation, staunching emigration and keeping wages low, labourers saw them as a rung up the ladder of survival, self-respect and independence. Burchardt, constructing a database from 1,971 records of 1,641 allotment sites and deploying extreme care with his sources, demonstrates how the allotment movement judiciously functioned within an evangelical notion of a divine corrective regime and takes on some of his most eminent colleagues. Among the latter are those who have accounted for nineteenth-century allot- ments as simple paternalist strategies or those who have ignored them altogether.

Although by the end of the nineteenth century, allotments could constitute up to one-fifth of a rural family's income, and their numbers continued to increase, particularly near cities, the allotment movement itself, as an 'immense project of social engineering' (p. 234), had begun its political decline. With this decline was the beginning of the modern assumptions of allotments as populist and bucolic retreats - and their appearance in painting, engrav- ing and photography. Other projects of social reform, centred particularly around housing and local government, were taking over.

The Allotment Movement in England contains one illustration, the frontispiece: it is of a man digging up potatoes while a young woman holding a child looks on. Beyond lies the rear of a small cottage and outhouses - symbols of the domesticity it was hoped allotments would promote. This illustration also served as frontispiece to the 1835 edition of the Labourer's Friend Magazine, the organ of the movement for allotments promoted by London professionals and various members of the rural gentry and aristocracy. Plebian and agrarian, thus, as the author Jeremy Burchardt wryly notes, the antithesis of the picturesque, allotments were rarely depicted in the nineteenth century.

Published under the auspices of the Royal His- torical Society and once a doctoral thesis, this book is the first full-length account of the nineteenth-century allotment movement in England and it also accounts for regional and county variations. What relevance has it got for the garden historian? Primarily, it reminds us that any matters related to land, including designed gardens and landscapes, are objects of social and political struggle. The work identifies three periods of the allotment movement and concentrates on the first two: from the outbreak of the wars with France in 1793 to the agrarian upheavals of the 'Swing Riots' of 1830-31, and from the legislation of the mid-1840s to the first official census on allotments in 1873 when the third period begins.

By the early nineteenth century, landlords having parcelled out their land at fair rent to their labourers (the allotment movement, as the housing movement came from the reforming, not the working or labouring classes) found them growing on what these called their 'little farms' not subsistence food, but wheat as a prestige cash crop and at double their hired productivity. If landlords and parishes saw allotments as a means of staving off starvation, staunching emigration and keeping wages low, labourers saw them as a rung up the ladder of survival, self-respect and independence. Burchardt, constructing a database from 1,971 records of 1,641 allotment sites and deploying extreme care with his sources, demonstrates how the allotment movement judiciously functioned within an evangelical notion of a divine corrective regime and takes on some of his most eminent colleagues. Among the latter are those who have accounted for nineteenth-century allot- ments as simple paternalist strategies or those who have ignored them altogether.

Although by the end of the nineteenth century, allotments could constitute up to one-fifth of a rural family's income, and their numbers continued to increase, particularly near cities, the allotment movement itself, as an 'immense project of social engineering' (p. 234), had begun its political decline. With this decline was the beginning of the modern assumptions of allotments as populist and bucolic retreats - and their appearance in painting, engrav- ing and photography. Other projects of social reform, centred particularly around housing and local government, were taking over.

This book sheds another and sharper light on the projects, writings and image-making - and clients - of Humphry Repton and John Claudius Loudon, to locate their place in early nineteenth-century debates about rural and urban society and the process whereby the former was assimilated into a liberal and urban-dominated national culture. The Allotment Movement in England is more than about the early allotment movement: it is a book about changing rural social and class consciousness, about the limits of Malthusianism and the values of Benthamism, about the creation of a social consensus about domestic and cultural life and, not least, about gardening as a radical gesture.

ELIZABETH LEBAS 4/14 Haslemere Road, London N8 9QX, UK

Joan Morgan and Alison Richards, The New Book of Apples, 2nd edn (London: Ebury, 2002), 316 pp., 32 colour paintings by Elisabeth Dowle and illus. in black-and-white, ?35.00 (hbk), ISBN 0- 09-188398-9.

The fact that The Book of Apples was not reviewed in Garden History when it was first published in 1993 is perhaps not surprising. Maybe the second edition entitled The New Book of Apples sounds like an even less likely candidate. Do not be misled, this is an important book for garden historians and historic gardens alike.

Food plants were grown long before orna- mentals and garden design and cultivation was clearly influenced by this. Fruit trees were significant in ancient gardens' and their regular planting in rows and on grids seems to have influenced early formal garden layouts. This equal spacing is practical as it gives each plant its fair share of soil to colonize for water and nutrients - especially important in the arid Middle East where ancient gardens developed.

The New Book of Apples is written in two sections: the first is the history of apple cultivation and the second is a directory of over two thousand cultivars from around the world. It seems that almost all apple cultivars derive from a single species, Malus sieversii, which grows in the Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan, near the western border with China. The capital city is Alma Ata, which translates as 'Father of Apples'.

The book takes one on a tour of everything about apples from cultivation, garden design, storage, cooking, and the spread of commercial cultivation and uses of apples, such as cider. Sometimes they are mixed in the description of a historical period and other times a separate chapter is given to a particular topic. In this way, it is not a simple reference book to, say, garden design and fruit. The social and economic reasons for what is described are woven into the text. This stimulates as many questions as it gives answers. This is a good approach for a pioneering book on its topic, but it does not always make for easy reference.

Fruit was an integral part of the designed garden from earliest times and became a particular feature in

This book sheds another and sharper light on the projects, writings and image-making - and clients - of Humphry Repton and John Claudius Loudon, to locate their place in early nineteenth-century debates about rural and urban society and the process whereby the former was assimilated into a liberal and urban-dominated national culture. The Allotment Movement in England is more than about the early allotment movement: it is a book about changing rural social and class consciousness, about the limits of Malthusianism and the values of Benthamism, about the creation of a social consensus about domestic and cultural life and, not least, about gardening as a radical gesture.

ELIZABETH LEBAS 4/14 Haslemere Road, London N8 9QX, UK

Joan Morgan and Alison Richards, The New Book of Apples, 2nd edn (London: Ebury, 2002), 316 pp., 32 colour paintings by Elisabeth Dowle and illus. in black-and-white, ?35.00 (hbk), ISBN 0- 09-188398-9.

The fact that The Book of Apples was not reviewed in Garden History when it was first published in 1993 is perhaps not surprising. Maybe the second edition entitled The New Book of Apples sounds like an even less likely candidate. Do not be misled, this is an important book for garden historians and historic gardens alike.

Food plants were grown long before orna- mentals and garden design and cultivation was clearly influenced by this. Fruit trees were significant in ancient gardens' and their regular planting in rows and on grids seems to have influenced early formal garden layouts. This equal spacing is practical as it gives each plant its fair share of soil to colonize for water and nutrients - especially important in the arid Middle East where ancient gardens developed.

The New Book of Apples is written in two sections: the first is the history of apple cultivation and the second is a directory of over two thousand cultivars from around the world. It seems that almost all apple cultivars derive from a single species, Malus sieversii, which grows in the Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan, near the western border with China. The capital city is Alma Ata, which translates as 'Father of Apples'.

The book takes one on a tour of everything about apples from cultivation, garden design, storage, cooking, and the spread of commercial cultivation and uses of apples, such as cider. Sometimes they are mixed in the description of a historical period and other times a separate chapter is given to a particular topic. In this way, it is not a simple reference book to, say, garden design and fruit. The social and economic reasons for what is described are woven into the text. This stimulates as many questions as it gives answers. This is a good approach for a pioneering book on its topic, but it does not always make for easy reference.

Fruit was an integral part of the designed garden from earliest times and became a particular feature in

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