Sir Joseph Paxton

Joseph Paxton was from a humble background. He was born in August 1803 at Milton Bryan in Bedfordshire. His father, William was a tenant farmer and Joseph was the youngest of nine children. At the age of 15, he left school to work on the farm of an elder brother. His interests however lay in gardening and within a few months he had found employment with Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner at Battlesden Park, Woburn.  He stayed  in this post for five years and during that time created his first lake.

In 1823 he applied for a post at Chiswick Gardens, a property leased by the Horticultural Society from the Duke of Devonshire. Still only 20, he lied about his age, claiming to have been born in 1801. Within a year, he was promoted to foreman and often met the 6th Duke, William George Spencer Cavendish who owned the nearby Chiswick House. At the age of 23, Paxton was offered the post of Head Gardener at Chatsworth, the Cavendish family seat. The gardens were considered to be one of the finest of the time and he immediately accepted. He took a coach to Derbyshire that evening, arriving at Chatsworth early next morning. By the start of the working day, he had explored the gardens, re-organised the 80 garden staff, sat down to breakfast and met Sarah Brown, neice of the housekeeper, whom he was to marry in 1827. He claimed that by 9am he had completed his first morning's work.

Paxton remained as head gardener until 1832 when he became the Estate Manager. He had a friendly relationship with the Duke and he remained at Chatsworth until William Cavendish died in 1858. During that time he was allowed to pursue his own interests and to undertake a number of private commissions. He brought about numerous changes and improvements to the estate. 

Construction of the Great Conservatory began in 1836. This structure of iron, timber and glass was 84m long and 37m wide and Paxton's design concepts were later to be employed in the Crystal Palace. He was assisted by architect Decimus Burton. This enormous building took  3 years to complete after which time it was ready to house numerous exotic plants.  Down the centre was a carriage drive and it was illuminated by 12000 lamps. The heating system was housed below ground and the eight boilers were maintained by a team of ten men. The vast quantities of coal were supplied by an underground tramway.  Coal and staff shortages in the First World War caused many of the plants to die and in 1920 the 9th Duke ordered it's demolition. It took several attempts before a charge powerful enough blew it up!

The Lily House was built in 1849 to house a single species, Victoria Regia which had been transported from the Amazon. The leaves were large enough to supportthe weight of a small child. This was housed in the heated main tank  which also contained wheels to give motion to the water. The Lily House also contained eight smaller tanks. This structure was also destroyed in 1920.

In anticipation of a visit by Tsar Nicholas I, Paxton was asked to construct the Emperor Fountain. Work started in 1843 and took  6 months. A reservoir was dug above the house to supply the water and the fountain stands at the north end of the Canal Pond also known as the Emperor Lake. The highest in the world, it seldom reaches it's full 90m due to shortage of water.

Paxton also built enormous rockeries, ponds, water features, a grotto, an arboretum, a ravine and several greenhouses.

The village of Edensor (pronounced Ensor) lies within the bounds of the Chatsworth estate. The village originally straddled the banks of the River Derwent and was in full view of the house. This displeased the 4th Duke who started to move the villlage to a new location "over the hill" where it would be out of sight. The 6th Duke completed this project by engaging the architect John Roberton of Derby who designed a number of villas and houses in a variety of different styles. The layout of Edensor was to Paxton's design. The walled and gated village surrounds a large green and St. Peter's Church stands high on a mound. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, this replaced an earlier, smaller church. Since the death of her husband, the 11th Duke in 2003, the Dowager Duchess now occupies part of the former viacarage.  Edensor churchyard contains the graves of most of the Dukes and their families as well as that of Joseph Paxton and Kathleen, the sister of John F. Kennedy. 

Paxton was to become wealthy, largely by astute investment in railway stocks and shares and he held directorship is both the Midland Railway and the London and North Western.  Both railways had adjacent stations in Buxton built to similar designs and Paxton was responsible for the great fan windows at the end of each, one of which may be seen today.  The village of Rowsley is only 3 miles from Chatsworth and in 1845 the Buxton, Matlock and Midland Junction Railway  of which Paxton was also a director asked him  to build their station. Five years later, he designed the company offices and some cottages nearby.  The Park in Buxton is Paxton's other great contribution to that town. He laid out a fashionable 19th century estate of villas lining a circular road. In the central open space is Buxton's cricket ground where famously "snow stopped play" in June 1975 when Derbyshire were playing Lancashire. 

It was away from Derbyshire that Paxton found his greatest fame.  In 1850 a Royal Commission was considering entries in a design competition for the Great Exhibition which was to be held in Hyde Park. Although over 200 designs were forthcoming, none were suitable. A fellow director of the Midland Railway suggested to Paxton that he might submilt a scheme although the deadline was only 9 days hence. Paxton had to attend a board meeting in Derby and was seen to be sketching throughout the proceedings. At the close of the meeting he displayed the design of his Crystal Palace. After some opposition, Paxton's scheme was accepted and construction took just 8 months. This enormous glass building was prefabrictaed in iron and glass and was based upon his work at Chatsworth. The exhibition hall was 563m long and 124m wide. The floors covered almost 72000 square metres.

"The Great Exhibition of 1851 of the works of industry of all nations" was conceived by Prince Albert whose aim was to stage the greatest exhibition of all time of inventions and art. More than 100000 xhibits were drawn from across the Empire.  Queen Victoria and Prince Albert performed the opening ceemony on 1st May 1851.  By the closing date in mid October, more than 6 million people had visited the Crystal Palace. The profits of over £200000 were used to purchase the land in Kensington where  The V & A and many of London's other museums now stand.

Queen Victoria granted Paxton his knighthood in 1851 for his achievement.

In 1852 the building was dismantled and re-erected in Sydenham in South London. It continued to be used as an exhibition hall and for concerts until 1936 when it was destroyed by fire. 

Baron Mayer de Rothschild commissioned Paxton to build Mentmore Towers in 1850. This Buckinghamshire house was one of the greatest Victorian country homes. He was next asked by a cousin, Baron James de Rothschild to build Chateau de Ferrieres near Paris, a house in the style of Mentmore but twice as large. Proposals currently stand to renovate Mentmore for conversion to a luxury hotel and the Chateau has been donated to the University of Paris. Wilhelm I of Germany said of Ferrieres "No Kings could afford this. It could only belong to a Rothschild.

A further country house was built at Battlesden near Woburn, the place of his first empoyment at age 15. The Duke of Bedford purchased this after just 30 years and demolished it as he wanted no other mansion so close to his home at Woburn Abbey.

The first municipal cemetery was in London Road, Coventry designed in 1845 by Paxton. His connection with that city continued and he was elected as the Liberal M. P. in 1854, a seat which he held for 11 years.

The most ambitious project, one which never left the drawing board, was The Great Victorian Way. Paxton adapted his design for the Crystal Palace to a structure that would encircle Central London. This was to be a great glass arcade 22m wide and 33m high. The route, 10 miles long would have linked a number of main line stations passing through Westminster, The City, Hyde Park and crossing the River Thames in three places.  The streets were congested and polluted and a fast transport system, protected from the weather was projected. A roadway down the centre would be served by buses and cabs and would be lined with houses and shops. At the second floor there was to be a railway originally planned to carry 4 tracks but later revised to 8. The trains would be driven by compressed air carried in tubes alongside the tracks. There would have been both stopping and express trains, the latter completing half of the circuit in 15 minutes. The estimated cost was £34 million and income would come from property rental and transport fares. The scheme was presented to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Metropolitan Communications in 1855 and although it initially found favour, it was rejected on grounds of cost. 

The Great Victorian Way

Paxton undertook many other projects including the design of public parks and of private houses. He was consulted on improvements to Kew Gardens and he published and edited a number of horticultural magazines and books.

On the death of the 6th Duke in 1858, Paxton retired from Chatsworth but was to continue working independently. He died in June 1865 in Sydenham and his funeral was held at Edensor. His wife Sarah continued to live at their Chatsworth home until her death in 1871.

On being ten with two shillings and sixpence to spend on an adventure

By Andrew Simpson

When you only have 2/6d [12p] pocket money where you can have an adventure away from home and still have something left for sweets is an important consideration when you are 10. 

Now I was an urban child born in south east London and my adventures were circumscribed by the sheer size of London.  Not for me the lonely walk along a country lane, or a journey through an enchanted wood hard by a babbling brook.  Apart from our back garden, trees, vast expanses of grass and water was by and large offered up by the local parks and the river.

But the Thames was a working river, which made it fascinating but dangerous and a place where great stretches were out of bounds.  Likewise the parks were where grownups had sought to curtail your fun by flower beds, and signs warning you to keep off the grass.

But that is perhaps a little harsh on the park authorities.  For some time after it was opened as Telegraph Hill Park in 1895 a small section of the lower park had been given over to a play area, including a hollowed out tree truck which became in succession the conning tower of a submarine, a tank and the gate of an old castle.

Later in the great freeze of 1962-63 the park benches became toboggans to be pulled with great difficulty up the hill only to be turned around and ridden down the same icy incline.

And there were of course still plenty of bombsites but by the 1950s most had been cleared, flattened and boarded off.  Although there was the old bombed out church around the corner whose crypt had survived and this became an assembly point for groups of children armed with candles to explore the labyrinth of passages below.

Which I suppose is the point that most of our adventures didn’t require much money and like children all over it was up to you to make the adventure from what you could find.  So David growing up in Chorlton played in the old brick works along with what was left of the clay pits and a dark and encountering the  sinister figure of Duffy who guarded the place.

He remembered “the Clay Pits” which were “situated to the immediate east of Longford Park, just the other side of the interrupted Rye Bank Road - it was a series of mounds and gulleys, the left over from previous workings of the old brick works factory with its tall chimney.

It was a forbidden play place and it was guarded by an almost mythical man named Duffy.  With another 9 year old boy, I recall daring ourselves to go into this derelict building one day and even crawling under the tunnel - through rubble to a place where I could look up inside the chimney and see the small hole of daylight at the top.

On re-emerging we continued to play until - that knowledge of being watched - made its presence felt - and we looked around to see a man who I think was called Duffy staring at us, stood on a small wall about 12 yards away. Scared witless we fled the scene, and although not chased, the memory of Duffy, the clay pits, and the old building, has played a part in several nightmares since that day!”

On the other hand London offered a huge network of buses, trains and the Underground and for 2/6d you could travel to the edges of the city and beyond.

Personally I never saw the point in sitting on the Circle Line of the Underground and constantly looping past the same 27 stations, alternating between daylight and the noisy and smelly tunnels.  Even if the game of guessing which station people got off could be fun.

No, for me it was the booking hall of Queens Road railway station on a Saturday morning and the promise of a bright new adventure.

Sometimes you struck gold and got to the end of a line, all open fields, posh houses and sunshine.  And sometimes you ended up in a drab nondescript mix of streets old timber yards and as often as not a canal which with that wonderful sense of timing of such disasters was always accompanied by rain.

Never ever believe anyone who tells you that summers were always dry sunny and hot when they were young, because they could never have paid one shilling return to travel to South Bermondsey Railway Station and try to find a bright spot in the warren of streets which snaked under the railway line.

Some childhood memories and adventures are best left in the past.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson & Cynthia Wigley

Read more articles by Andrew Simpson At http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk

SomeSouth London Memories

Grandparents

Throughout my childhood, a fortnightly visit to New Cross in South East London was obligatory. My grandmother lived at 105 Woodpecker Road, a house that she shared with my aunt and uncle and their children. My grandfather had died in 1944. the year of my birth. My Nan was a dour victorian woman, the sort who gained her only pleasure by constantly grumbling. Auntie Dolly was cheerful and always gave a warm welcome. Her husband Vic, was jolly too, although I always had trouble understanding his strong London accent. This was a large house in a terrace. Two reception rooms, a dining room, a kitchen and three bedrooms. The bathroom was only added in the 1960's. The small back yard had a toilet and a coalshed. Outside the back door was the meat safe; a wooden box with a mesh front to fend off the flies. The tin bath hung on the wall. It was always a gloomy home, even in  bright daylight. Come evening, the 40 watt bulbs would be grudgingly illuminated when it was almost too dark to find the light switch.

There was just one more street between Woodpecker Road and the railway sidings so the clanking of waggons and coaches being shunted was a common sound. Of a Saturday afternoon, the air would be filled with the roar of the crowd at Millwall football ground which was just across the railway.

The woman next door but one was known to be eccentric. She lived alone with Tibbles and when her feline friend failed to come home one day, she went out in search. Around the corner in Chipley Street, a tabby cat lay in the gutter. Carrying the body home, she was sure that a little warmth was all that was needed to bring about a revival.  It was only when the real Tibbles came through the door a couple of hours later, that she realised that the dead cat still roasting in the gas oven was an imposter.

The highlight of these visits was the journey across London. In the early years, we would sometimes take a tram from Victoria. This waited at its' terminus in the middle of Vauxhall Bridge Road. I think this was route 36 and took us along Old Kent Road into New Cross. As a young child, I was always thrilled to sit on the top deck of the swaying and rattling  old car. This was one of the last tram services in London, replaced by buses in 1952, the latter offering little excitement.  Another route involved an ancient relic of the Undergound. Changing trains at Whitechapel we would descend the stairs to the platforms of the East London line. The railway would soon pass under the Thames and it was clear from the moisture running down the station walls that not all was watertight. The ancient train, of only 3 or 4 coaches, had sliding doors - passenger operated. One had to heave on a shiny brass handle and remember to close it behind you. We travelled only 2 or 3 stations to Surrey Docks where we would wait for a single deck bus. I never saw a ship but sensed that masts and funnels were hidden behind the high dock walls. The bus wound it's way through the south London streets crossing the Surrey Canal where a Thames lighter  or two, laden with sawn timber,  would always be seen moored at a woodyard. The canal is now sadly filled in and turned into roadways. Nearby was Folkestone Gardens, now a small park but then a group of forbidding tenement buildings known as "mansions".

As I grew older and bored with family chatter, I would go out exploring the neighbouring streets. This was near to dockland and had suffered wartime bombing. There were a number of cleared sites where houses once stood. Some of these served as used car lots, others were occupied by pre-fabs. My aunt worked at Pecry Haberdashers in Deptford High Street. I seem to remember an open fronted shop, wooden floors and a pneumatic payment system . Each counter was connected to a system of pipes and payments would be sealed into a container which would be propelled by air pressure to the office upstairs. She was the cashier and would receive the money, prepare the receipt and send it back to the counter with any change.  On New Cross Road, the Frank Matcham designed Empire Theatre had not yet been demolished. The last curtain had fallen but the house opened again for a record attempt by a pianist. There was no entry charge but people out of curiosity were looking in to see this man who had already suffered two sleepless nights and by this time had bandaged fingers. Wandering another day, I went in the opposite direction and found that the strangely named Coldblow Lane, dived under the railway line through a narrow tunnel. The other side was an abandoned level crossing and diminutive signal box. The tracks led into what appeared to have been a wagon works. The large sheds and empty yards were open to anyone who cared to wander in. There was no vandalism, no graffiti; they stood as they had on the day that the last worker had left.

My visits to New Cross eventually became less frequent. My Grandmother died, my cousins married, Aunt and Uncle moved to Lewisham and Woodpecker Road was demolished to make way for a new estate.

David Easton

Reckless Motoring

Reckless Motoring 
 
 Summer has at last arrived and living as I do in Whaley Bridge, within half a mile of Taxal Church, in good air and good company, I ought, you would think, to be as happy as the days just now are long. Not so. Motor cars run through our pretty village to and from Buxton at the rate of from 25 to 40 miles an hour. Some - I do not say all - are careless of everybody and everything but themselves. They think they have the complete right of the road. Everyone must make way for a high powered motor car. Dogs and cats they run over, and occasionally old men. The dust they create in running at the speed they do is most injurious to pedestrians, crops, and dwellings. Should you open your bedroom windows your rooms are soon covered, and make extra work for the already hard worked maids and assistants. Shopkeepers have to shut their doors, or their goods would be spoiled. A butcher told me that on a Saturday afternoon in fine weather, after his shop had been open all day, anything sold after 4 to 5pm wanted washing before being fit to eat.
J.E.Cheetham
July 17th 1907

Sheep Rustling

In December 1850 Samuel Taylor of Hulme left 9 sheep in a field in Hodge Lane in Salford. He had left them in the charge of a young man named Richard Warren but the following day, neither man nor sheep were to be found. The loss was reported to the police at Chorlton upon Medlock who soon tracked down the culprit. Warren was found to have sold a sheep to a butcher at  Heaton Lane, Stockport, another to a butcher at Hazel Grove and a third in Whaley Bridge. 
The police caught up with Warren in a Whaley Bridge pub where he was found with the remaining 6 sheep in his possession.