Blists Hill Victorian Town Gardens

The Blists Hill Garden Project Welcome to the first of our regular ‘Diary and Update’ pages about an exciting new project we are undertaking at Blists Hill Victorian Town.

We are planning to add to and upgrade all our existing gardens in a three pronged approach which will increase the historic accuracy of the gardens, make them more accessible to the wide range of visitors which Blists Hill attracts and make them easier to maintain throughout the year.

Updates will be posted regularly so you can monitor our progress. Enjoy our successes and commiserate with our failures, whilst you watch the whole project develop. Sit back and participate in what will be a great adventure. Alternatively, why not pop into Blists Hill Victorian Town and see for yourself how it’s all going.

Garden Project - Ideals & Aims

Country Lane Lanes such as this were a real resource for many country folk; free grazing, free fruit, berries, mushrooms and herbs, all items which would have added to the family diet and medicine chest. As this is at the very beginning of a visit it needs to set the scene and invite you to look more closely at our interpretation. New Inn Garden Pubs played an important role in the community as did there gardens and yards. They were not merely for sitting out in to enjoy a drink; they were a meeting point, a social venue, a place where pigeon racing, flower and vegetable shows, quoits matches and all manner of other exhibitions took place. Often the Landlords themselves grew exotic flowers or bred fancy fowl as he had the time and money to indulge in such hobbies. For many inner city pubs, small areas such as this were seen to be little pieces of the countryside.

Allotments - Garden One Allotments were a vital part of the community as they had developed from the original Smallholdings Act of 1908 which gave many the chance to grow their own fruit and vegetables. The plan here is to upgrade the existing allotment to be more period in style and approach. Research will be undertaken on original planting plans and there will be a development based around the gardener’s shed full of all the paraphernalia the towns folk may need to tend their allotments; tools, planting plans and calendars, seed packets, and even a gardener at times.

Allotments - Garden Two

This part of the project will transform wasteland alongside Allotment One to become a second allotment dedicated to market gardening; a garden which produces fancy flowers and produce for sale rather than personal consumption. It is a commercial venture which would have needed investment and a keen business mind to organise and run.

Remembrance Garden The current garden is a very popular attraction with visitors; a pleasant spot to sit amongst the roses and watch the townsfolk go about their business. A large fountain is to be incorporated amongst its flower beds, and maintenance work will be undertaken to ensure this garden is easy to care for without spoiling its tranquillity and peace.

Estate Office Garden

Only a small patch, but no less important than the other gardens. This was the office for the Earl of Craven where tenants came to pay rents and fines, and seek guidance and information. Therefore, the whole building was symbolic of the Earl and his reputation. A neat, tidy and well cared for garden could indicate the type of master and landlord he was.

Duke of Sutherland Garden With free time and increased real wages, many Victorians were able to indulge in hobbies. This will be a garden for pleasure and leisure. It will have brought in exotic flowers and garden statuary. It will be laid out to a formal plan inspired by some of the larger gardens that the occupant may have visited on occasional days out and even holidays.

School Garden

Evidence shows that some enterprising schools had small gardens close by, where they made excellent use of the space by giving gardening lessons to the boys and cooking lessons to the girls using the produce from the garden. Some teachers even had a small area where they grew decorative flowers for drawing and science lessons; nothing, therefore, went to waste.

The Forest Glen Refreshment Pavilion Garden The Forest Glen, in its day, was a popular attraction set at a local beauty spot where members of the CTC regularly cycled out to visit and so the gardens were part of the attraction. This will be a garden which is easy to maintain, but aimed at being a pleasure to look at. It will be natural in design and of a style which would have befitted its original location.

Squatter Garden

This is a garden for survival; everything grown is to help eke out the family diet. Flowers will be seen, but more for their medicinal and culinary properties than for their look. Vegetables will be rotated for the seasons and it is hoped to be able to farm a small crop of corn or barley.

Tollhouse There was, in the Victorian era, an all pervading myth regarding the rural idyll of the countryside; thatched cottages, well fed children, sweet fresh air and a plentiful supply of food. In hindsight we know this not to be the case, but, for the Victorians, it was a very real belief which was perpetuated by much of the arts of the time. Painters such as Helen Allingham produced many idyllic scenes of gardens and she was a popular artist across all the classes. We want to recreate an Allingham garden, and thus further perpetuate the myth and the mindset of those stuck in the ever-expanding grimy and unsanitary towns and cities. For 2005/6 we have concentrated, with the support of the Rowlands Trust, on the gardens at our Duke of Sutherland House and the large allotments at the back of the Estate Office.

The Duke Of Sutherland Garden

The Duke of Sutherland Garden - July 2006

Pleasure gardening around the early nineteenth century saw a revival in formality with a look back to the historic past coupled with an abundance of symmetrically laid out brightly coloured flower beds.

This was, in part, brought about by the fall in the price of glass which allowed a proliferation of glass houses, a growing awareness of botanical gardening and horticulture, and the most extravagant feature of the popular fashion for all things Italianate.

Terraces, statuary, clipped Portuguese laurel, garden furniture and raised beds were very much in evidence in many a fashionable middle class garden. This was coupled with the earlier trellises and forms, and laid out beds. However, the style of planting for beds became more formal and forced than natural; plants were prized for their bright, primary and hot colours, and patterns were derived using mixtures in one bed.

Duke of Sutherland Garden Project Aims The design behind the Duke of Sutherland garden is based on a fictional premise of a gardener who is a keen amateur and who has invested the last eight years in his garden. He spends his holidays travelling around Great Britain visiting stately homes, botanical houses and public gardens, making detailed drawings and planting plans of whatever captures his eye, coming home to spend his free time transcribing these ideas into his own domain. The highlight of his year is a visit to the Shrewsbury Horticultural Show; here he always buys something for his garden, be it a plant or even a book, and he very much enjoys attending the lectures held by some wonderful gardeners who travel abroad for inspiration.

His garden is his pride and joy; it is somewhere to help him and his family relax so it must be usable, but it is also somewhere for him to show off, to some extent, to his friends and neighbours with his formality and use of exotic, rather than popular, plants and paraphernalia.

Though the existing garden is picturesque, its large beds and natural planting schemes do not allow visitors to examine the plants or get the most from the interpretation. Work is currently under way to make smaller, more formal, beds which allow fuller access all around. With some clever brickwork, courtesy of the Museum’s own maintenance team, steps into the building and in the main garden area will be eliminated whilst the historic imagery will be maintained.

More formally planted beds will make use of tactile, structural plants and this, teamed with bold, contrasting colour schemes as was the fashion of the day, will ensure all our visitors get a chance to enjoy the gardens.

This will not be a ‘hands-off’ garden, though obviously we would like it to continue to grow and, therefore, the taking of cuttings will be discouraged. It will be a garden to enjoy, discovering the textures and surfaces of the plants, taking in the heady scents of the vast mixture of flowers and herbs, and exploring the statuary and ornaments which will be added at a later date.

Work to Date

Work begins on raising the surface levels to ensure the garden is accessible to all.

The large central flower bed begins to take shape; originally the arch with the rose was going to be sited elsewhere, but since it has bloomed magnificently this year, we cannot bring ourselves to move it. Grateful thanks are extended to our magnificent maintenance team for working around it and ensuring it does not get damaged.

The Blists Hill Allotments

There was, during the Victorian era, a pervading myth, a rural idyll that the countryside was best and that farming was the one natural and essential industry. The countryside was seen, therefore, to be the seat of traditional virtues, the true life and the fount of morality and honesty, qualities which city life demoralised and corrupted.

Access to land had long been an issue in the countryside. Enthusiasm for allotments and the larger units known as cow pastures, developed in the late eighteenth century as a response to growing rural poverty. The possibility of keeping a cow, or at least of growing vegetables, gave the labourer and his family a chance of food, but the purchasing of suitable land was impossible.

The Smallholdings Act introduced by Henry Chaplin in 1892 was an attempt to appease this rural discontent which had manifested itself in a steady migration from the villages. The object of this measure was to help the deserving labouring man to acquire a smallholding; that is to say, a portion of land not less than one acre or more than fifty acres which they could work for their own use and self-help. However, if the labourer applied to the parish poor relief for assistance, he was made to give up his allotment. That said, applying for parish relief was seen as being at the lowest ebb, of being a pauper and, therefore, working the allotment was the much better alternative. However, it was always intended to be merely a supplement to the labourer’s wage, not an alternative.

Between 1795 and 1835 many pamphlets were produced advocating allotments and it is felt most of these were penned by the clergy. They also supported the growth of the many allotment societies which grew up in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Farmers, however, were hostile to them, believing that allotments made people too independent, invited the theft of seed and fertilisers, and caused them to spend their strength on their own land rather than that of the farmers who employed them. Despite the good intentions of the allotment providers, there was no doubt that the system was also used by the clergy and middle class as an activity to keep the workers busy and thus out of the ale houses and the perceived decline into crime.

The Allotment Gardens - Project Aims

To transform the existing allotment into a more historically accurate garden using traditional plants and planting methods, and laying out the whole so it is easily visible to all from the three sides whilst developing a plan to incorporate wide, fully accessible, brick pathways and raised beds to ensure fully inclusive access.

The very nature of the vegetables and flowers ensures a tactile and contrasting visual; strongly scented flowers and pungent vegetables will make this a garden which is attractive and informative to all.

The Museum has been working closely with Cruckton Hall School, a school teaching boys between the ages of 7 - 19 with special educational needs; specifically those associated with the autistic spectrum. They have produced an amazing School Garden - more details at a later date - and they have now extended their work into clearing and preparing a second allotment which will eventually become the Market Garden Allotment.

Birch twigs have replaced the more modern canes as plant supports. Allotments after initial planting in February and July 2006

	- Note the wheelbarrow is still in the same position as in the image.

The allotments are growing well as is shown by the two images with the wheelbarrow. Despite the angles being different the wheelbarrow has not moved.

A work shed has been built which allows the necessary modern items, such as hoses and tools, to be hidden out of sight, therefore, maintaining the historic interpretation.

As mentioned, Cruckton Hall School began work in 2005 on the second allotment. They cleared the ground, made good the fencing and laid a brick pathway up the centre to assist with access. By early this year it was ready for planting and in June a crop of radishes and herbs are almost ready to harvest.

Cruckton Hall cleared allotment and pathway - photographed early 2006