WILLIAM CURTIS’S Flora Londinensis, published in installments between 1777 and 1798, was the first comprehensive book on the flora of the capital and its environs and one of the first to focus on plants in an urban area. Meticulous hand-colored copperplate illustrations supported a text that described fritillary growing ‘in meadows between Mortlake and Kew’, chicory in Battersea Fields and a rare species of stonecrop on a chapel wall in Kentish Town.
Two centuries earlier, William Turner, ‘the father of British botany’, had noted carpets of bluebells, as well as great burnet and chamomile at Syon. And in his Herball of 1597, John Gerard wrote of clary growing wild around Gray’s Inn, Holborn, and pennyroyal on a common near Mile End.
London’s historic flora is unsurprising. Up until 1745, the fully built-up area only ran from around Westminster’s Horse Ferry crossing to Lambeth and Park Lane in the west and to Shoreditch and Mile End in the east. North of Oxford Street was mainly still fields and there wasn’t much more than a mile or so of development south of the Thames.
Even beyond that time, the city retained rural aspects. Kensington’s market gardens lingered into the 1800s and Notting Hill’s largest farms survived until the 1880s. Wood anemone and lesser celandine grew in Marylebone’s fields in the first decades of the 19th century. Traveller’s joy, or old-man’s beard, still draped the hedgerows of today’s fume-filled Edgware Road and the fragrance of lilyof-the-valley wafted across Hampstead Heath.
Denne historien er fra April 07, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 07, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Kitchen garden cook - Apples
'Sweet and crisp, apples are the epitome of autumn flavour'
The original Mr Rochester
Three classic houses in North Yorkshire have come to the market; the owner of one inspired Charlotte Brontë to write Jane Eyre
Get it write
Desks, once akin to instruments of torture for scribes, have become cherished repositories of memories and secrets. Matthew Dennison charts their evolution
'Sloes hath ben my food'
A possible paint for the Picts and a definite culprit in tea fraud, the cheek-suckingly sour sloe's spiritual home is indisputably in gin, says John Wright
Souvenirs of greatness
FOR many years, some large boxes have been stored and forgotten in the dark recesses of the garage. Unpacked last week, the contents turned out to be pots: some, perhaps, nearing a century old—dense terracotta, of interesting provenance.
Plants for plants' sake
The garden at Hergest Croft, Herefordshire The home of Edward Banks The Banks family is synonymous with an extraordinary collection of trees and shrubs, many of which are presents from distinguished friends, garnered over two centuries. Be prepared to be amazed, says Charles Quest-Ritson
Capturing the castle
Seventy years after Christian Dior’s last fashion show in Scotland, the brand returned under creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri for a celebratory event honouring local craftsmanship, the beauty of the land and the Auld Alliance, explains Kim Parker
Nature's own cathedral
Our tallest native tree 'most lovely of all', the stately beech creates a shaded environment that few plants can survive. John Lewis-Stempel ventures into the enchanted woods
All that money could buy
A new book explores the lost riches of London's grand houses. Its author, Steven Brindle, looks at the residences of plutocrats built by the nouveaux riches of the late-Victorian and Edwardian ages
In with the old
Diamonds are meant to sparkle in candlelight, but many now gather dust in jewellery boxes. To wear them today, we may need to reimagine them, as Hetty Lintell discovers with her grandmother's jewellery
