The Apothecaries' Garden E-Book

Sue Minter

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1996

Beschreibung

In the heart of London, beside the Thames not far from the site of the world famous flower show, there is another magical garden. It has been there for over three hundred years and is now the calmest corner, and the most valuable four acres of freehold, in fashionable SW3. It has been the scene of some of the most important developments in the history of horticulture, medicine and twentieth-century agriculture. This book tells its fascinating story.

Leseprobe

THE

APOTHECARIES’

GARDEN

A HISTORY OF THE

CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN

SUE MINTER

FOREWORD BY

H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES

Dedicated to Sir Hans Sloane in gratitude for his shrewd foresight over the terms and conditions of the indenture of 1722, without which the Garden would not be here at all

This book was first published in 2000 by Sutton Publishing Limited

This paperback edition first published in 2003

Reprinted 2006

The History Press The Mill, Brimscombe Port Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL52QGwww.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Sue Minter with research by Ruth Stungo, 2000, 2003, 2013

The right of Sue Minter to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9527 9

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Foreword: A Message from HRH The Prince of Wales

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Origin of the Chelsea Physic Garden

2 Miller’s Garden

3 1770–1848: The Development of Natural Classification

4 1848–1899: Changing Fortunes

5 1899–1970: A New Benefactor and a New Role

6 1970–2000: Crisis and a New Role

Postscript

Appendix 1: Chelsea Physic Garden Staff

Appendix 2: Chelsea Physic Garden History through Maps

Appendix 3: Medicinal and Useful Plants Growing at Chelsea in 1772

Appendix 4: Medicinal Plants at the Chelsea Physic Garden in the Year 2000

Appendix 5: The Historical Walk

Notes

Select Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The original proposal for this book was developed by Ruth Stungo when she was historical researcher, librarian, archivist and garden taxonomist at the Chelsea Physic Garden. She was responsible for much of the new research included in this volume, particularly that relating to the plant specimens sent from the Garden to the Royal Society in the eighteenth century, and to the work of the garden during the present century.

I would like to thank Ruth Stungo for the considerable research she has put into this history, along with previous researchers at the Garden, including Mark Laird. Dee Cook, Archivist at the Society of Apothecaries, was very helpful as were the staff at the Guildhall Library, and Dr Brent Elliot, Librarian at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library. Several past staff and associates at the Garden read the draft and contributed useful comments and reminiscences; they included Allen Paterson and Dr Mary Gibby. Members of the current Management Council did likewise; they included Chris Brickell, Henry Boyd-Carpenter and Lawrence Banks.

I am also grateful to past researchers at the Garden who have made the scientific work more understandable, particularly Alf Keys of IACR-Rothamsted, Professor Ronald Wood FRS and Professor Ben Miflin. The Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust has generously assisted with the cost of the colour plates.

Sophy Kershaw typed the manuscript most efficiently and was responsible for the stock listing of the Historical Walk which constitutes Appendix 5. Paul Bygrave assisted with taxonomy on the appendices. The City Parochial Foundation generously donated a copy of their official history which assisted understanding the evolution of their policy towards the Garden. I am also grateful to Laurent Lourson for drawing my attention to the connection of the war poet Wilfred Owen to the Garden. The family of William Hales (Mr Chris Dunn) has kindly supplied information about his Curatorship here. Duncan Donald brought to my attention the results of genealogical work by Bruce Forsyth’s first wife, Penny, which show him to be descended from William Forsyth, Gardener here 1771–84.

Lastly, my thanks to Christopher Feeney, commissioning editor, and to Helen Gray, editor, for their support.

INTRODUCTION

What was long known as the Apothecaries Garden, and is now the Chelsea Physic Garden, is an extraordinary survival in twenty-first century Britain. This is the first time that its history since 1673 has been brought together in one place and the first time that the history of the Garden in the twentieth century has been told.

The Society of Apothecaries still exists as a medical licensing body and indeed flourishes, in Blackfriars in the City of London, as the largest of the Livery Companies. However, the word ‘apothecary’ has long been superseded by ‘pharmacist’. So who was the seventeenth-century apothecary and why was there a need for a garden?

From the thirteenth century onwards traders in medicinal products, the majority of which were based on herbs, gradually distinguished themselves from the medieval spice dealers. The word apothecary derives from ‘apotheca’, which was a store for spices and herbs. Apothecaries needed to be able to identify the herbs they would be purchasing to compound their products and thus avoid adulteration, poisonings or ineffective treatment. This concern (very much still an issue with medical herbalists today) led them into binding apprentices within the Society and required that they study materia medica both growing in the wild and, more conveniently, gathered together in a garden. The Apothecaries’ Garden was thus a training ground. Not surprisingly, its subsequent history is closely linked to the evolution of medical training. The Society becoming authorized to license medical practitioners in 1815 was crucial for the retention of the Garden into the nineteenth century. Likewise, the ending of the requirement for the study of materia medica in 1895 (through the spreading influence of chemical medicine) was crucial in the decision of the Society to relinquish the Garden in 1899.

What is perfectly clear is that the Garden would not be here at all today but for the extremely shrewd terms of the Deed of Covenant of its benefactor, Sir Hans Sloane, of 1722. Every year, as Curator, I sign a cheque for £5 charged to the Garden as a ‘sundry debtor’ of the Cadogan Holdings Company, Earl Cadogan being the heir to Sloane. This beneficial ground rental in perpetuity assisted the Society in maintaining the Garden, otherwise dependent on the private resources of its practising members. What was even more significant were the conditions Sloane attached if the apothecaries’ resolve wavered and they wanted to relinquish the project. The Garden could not be sold but had to be offered to a series of scientific societies. Even Sloane’s heirs became restricted by late nineteenth-century legal opinion. They could not build on it or sell it.

Sloane’s Deed came to be invoked on three major occasions, once in the 1850s when the Garden was threatened by the spread of London’s railway system, once in the 1890s when the apothecaries did relinquish control and once in the 1970s when the present charity was formed. Rarely can the restrictive clauses of a covenant have had such a beneficial effect for botany. As a writer in John O’London’s Weekly on 6 January 1923 reflected: ‘Not one of London’s pleasant places has been more often threatened and saved than the old Physic Garden at Chelsea.’ It is to the credit of the Garden that, as its history has evolved, it has become greater than its founders intended. In its heyday, the eighteenth century under Philip Miller, the Garden became the most famous botanic garden in Europe for the number and rarity of species cultivated, whether or not they had any direct connection with medicine.

The history of the Garden is full of stories connected to it both directly and indirectly, stories of its worldwide influence beyond its walls. Stories, for example, of the invention of milk chocolate, of pits for pineapples, the first heated glasshouse in England, the genetic improvement of the cotton industry in the Georgia colonies, the transplantation of the tea industry from China to India, the struggle of women for a scientific education, experimentation in double-glazing and the identification of the plant which now cures nine out of ten children of their leukaemia.

In the twentieth century the Garden took on a totally new role with no formal link to the Society of Apothecaries. Supported by the City Parochial Foundation (in a broad Fabian interpretation of that charity’s remit to support the poor via education and access to open space), the Garden supplied colleges and polytechnics with botanical material for teaching, and hosted classes. As the century progressed, Imperial College contributed greatly to Britain’s ‘Green Revolution’ funded by the Agricultural Research Council. The Garden became virtually an agricultural research station with experiments on the productivity of rye through the effects of manipulating light on weed control, and on disease management in root crops and tropical grasses.

Despite the many and varied interests of its staff and associates (Miller’s melons, Hudson’s grasses, Curtis’s botanical art, Lindley’s orchids, Moore’s ferns) there has always been a continuum of interest in the curative properties of plants. The Victorian Curator Thomas Moore, for example, made the Garden the foremost collection of medicinal plants in Britain. That it still remains so today is at least in part due to the resurgence of interest in plant-based medicine in the 1980s and 1990s. Eighty per cent of the world’s population depend on herbal medicine and half of the top twenty-five pharmaceuticals derive from natural products, many of them plants.

Today, the Apothecaries’ Garden (as the Chelsea Physic Garden) is the one place in Britain where a large number of medicinal species can be seen by the visiting public as well as by medical professionals. This has been the case only since the wider access policy from 1983 onwards. The Garden serves to reinforce public understanding of our dependence on plant products.

The twenty-first century will present new challenges, especially over conservation. The loss of biodiversity by increasing land clearance and forest loss is a direct threat to most of the world’s population which depends on plant material directly for its healthcare. Pharmaceutical companies need access to plant material to source novel chemical structures for drug development and behind the high-tech approach of biotechnology companies is often the basic need for the gene from the living plant. As herbal medicine grows in popularity in the developed world, increasing pressures are put on the supplying countries where much of the plant material is taken from the wild.

A concern over conservation could not have been foreseen by the seventeenth-century apothecary when there were not the population pressures that there are now. These new issues do, however, emphasize the ongoing role for the Chelsea Physic Garden, especially in education and public awareness. It is far from being just a quaint survival in village Chelsea.

1

THE ORIGIN OF THE CHELSEA

PHYSIC GARDEN

The date that we now trace as the origin of the Chelsea Physic Garden, 1673, was a crucial time for its founders, the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London. They had established themselves as independent of the City Company of Grocers in 1617, but had suffered the disaster of the burning down of their hall in Blackfriars in the Great Fire of 1666 and the subsequent expense of rebuilding. Of particular importance for the siting of the new Garden was the decision in 1673 to set up a committee to supervise the building of a barge and bargehouse for the Company. At a time when all effective communication in London and its outskirts was by river, this was a practical consideration as well as providing an opportunity for the Company to participate in the annual pageant of barges on the river organized by the Lord Mayor, a highlight of Restoration London. Riverside land at Chelsea was leased for sixty-one years from Charles Cheyne and three bargehouses were built, the furthest east for the apothecaries and a double house leased variously to the vintners, goldsmiths, skinners and the tallow chandlers in order to support the Society.1 The layout of these houses can be clearly seen in the map of the Garden by John Haynes of 1751.

The fledgling Garden served three purposes. It provided a base for the Society’s barge. And from here the Society could conduct ‘herborizing’ expeditions to adjacent sites such as Battersea or Putney Heath for the botanical instruction of their apprentices. Increasingly it provided a site for the growing of plants used in medicines for correct identification by the Society’s apprentices. So it was a Garden above all for training.

It is perhaps worth considering why training was considered so important by the Society, still little more than fifty years established. From the thirteenth century onwards there had been considerable rivalry between different bodies involved in trading in medicines, in treating, prescribing and dispensing and in the definition of boundaries between these practices. In England the original traders were the dealers in heavy, gross goods, the ‘grossers’ or grocers who became a Company c. 1373. The barber surgeons, who performed the procedure of blood-letting (a part of their craft commemorated in the red and white striped ‘barbers’ pole) had emerged even earlier, from 1215, when monks and priests had been banned from spilling blood during their treatment of the sick. Physicians, who formed their own College in 1518, came to exercise control over all other practitioners, at least in theory, after 1553.

Apothecaries were henceforth only to dispense prescriptions for licensed members of the College of Physicians. The ensuing struggle was compounded by the fact that there were insufficient physicians to treat the expanding population of London (which became crucial during the plague years), while apothecaries were eager to benefit from the greatly increased trade in imported drugs which took place in the last three decades of the sixteenth century. Under James I the issue of the Charter to the Apothecaries in 1617 established them as a self-governing body required to train and examine their members in order to raise standards. In 1623 they issued a Book of Ordinances to govern their apprentices, who were to train for eight years in pharmacy, the recognition of drug material and its correct preparation and administration. Penelope Hunting, in her history of the Society, points out that Nicholas Culpeper trained under this system in the 1630s. During their training a garden would have been of huge importance in assisting with plant recognition. Hence the plot at Chelsea should be seen as part of the validation of the Society’s credentials as a reputable medical body in their struggle with the physicians. They were to gain legal right to practise medicine only in 1704.

In these early days the life of the river was crucial to London’s transport and trade. The Society had originally leased a barge and, despite calls for subscriptions to be made to find one of their own in 1658, leasing was all that could be afforded. The barge finally obtained in 1673 by a boatbuilder, who was also employed by the Mercer’s Company, cost £110. It was a splendid affair with carved unicorns beside the entrance door and a rhinoceros above with the full arms of the Society on the stern.2 It was also painted and gilded, though this was not included in the initial cost, and must have made a fine appearance for the Mayor’s pageant when decked out with streamers, banners, ribbons, bargecloths, with attendants bearing staves and trumpeters to announce its arrival.3 Of course, the barge would not have been formally capparisoned when used for the practical herborizing trips of the apprentices. These seem to have been held regularly, for example once a month from April to September between 1687 and 1688.4

A new Garden amidst the market-garden land of village Chelsea must have caused some interest and it was clear that some sort of security was needed. On 9 October 1673, the immediate past Master of the Society, William Gape, gave £50 ‘towards the charge of the walling in the grounds at Chelsey taken for a garden in case the Company will wall in the same within five years’. In January 1675 the Society did indeed decide upon the advisability of an enclosing brick wall and invited subscriptions from its members. The amount of £285 5s 0d was raised, including Mr Gape’s £50, as well as £50 from the proprietors of the laboratory stock on condition that they could grow herbs for processing. Indeed in these early years the Garden did provide raw materials for producing medicines. For example, in 1678 150 pounds of mint were provided to be distilled for mint oil, and sage, pennyroyal, sweet marjoram and rue were also being grown in sufficient quantity to be cropped. The final cost of the wall was £412 6s 6d, the difference having to be borrowed. Building commenced in March 1676 and, when completed in 1677 by a Thomas Munden, measured 26 roods or 429 feet in length. To the right of the Swan Walk entrance today is a plaque to commemorate the building of this wall. Some commentators effectively date the founding of the Garden from this time.5 In 1678 it was decided to construct a watergate with stairs forming another opening to the river beside that afforded by the bargehouses.

The early years of staffing at the Garden were not altogether satisfactory. The first gardener, the apothecary Spencer Piggott, proved dishonest and incompetent and had been dismissed by December 1677. His replacement, Richard Pratt, was engaged at £30 a year plus lodging and seems to have been more successful, liaising with the older physic garden at Oxford and planting a considerable array of fruit: ‘nectarines of all sortes, Peaches, Apricotes, cherryes and plumes of several sorts of the best to be gott’.6

The merchant apothecary John Watts was appointed to order, manage and care for the Garden in 1680 at a salary of £50, with two gardeners, and with the proposal that he would plant ‘with foreign as well as native plants’7 and indeed it was due to Watts that the Garden first developed its international links.

The year 1680 was also a crucial date in that the first greenhouse, possibly unheated, was built at a cost of £138. By 1681 a ‘stove’ (heated) house had been completed in the centre of the Garden, facing the river, certainly the first heated house in England and possibly preceding those in Holland. This stimulated great interest among scientists keen on the cultivation of exotic plants, several of whom came to inspect it, among them the young Hans Sloane, later to become the Garden’s benefactor. Sloane wrote to John Ray, on 11 November 1684, telling him how Mr Watts ‘has a new contrivance, at least in this country; viz. he makes under the floor of his greenhouse a great fire plate, with grate, ash-hole etc., and conveys the warmth through the whole house, by tunnels; so that he hopes, by the help of weather-glasses within, to bring or keep the air at what degree of warmth he pleases, letting in upon occasion the outward air by the windows. He thinks to make, by this means, an artificial spring, summer and winter.’ His next letter, written after a cold spell, relates how he found ‘that in the day-time they put no fire into their furnaces, and that in the night they not only put in some fire, but cover the windows where they stand with pitch’d canvas, taking this off, and opening them, as much as the air or wind permits’. Later he reported to Ray that the methods developed by John Watts at Chelsea had been highly successful, and that the severe winter had ‘killed scarse any of his fine plants’.

The diarist John Evelyn came to look at the new greenhouse in 1685 and commented on Watts growing ‘the tree bearing the Jesuits’ bark’ (the source of the scarce and expensive anti-malarial quinine). He wrote in his diary of 6 August that ‘what was very ingenious was the subterranean heate conveyed by a stove under the conservatory all vaulted with brick so as he [Watts] has the doors and windows open in the hardest frosts, secluding only the snow’.

Early greenhouses (so named because they were meant to conserve evergreens over the winter) were masonry buildings with tiled roofs and large windows on one side. The one at Chelsea was decorated with ornamental pots on the roof, possibly two-handled urns, and with steps at each end.8 This stove is possibly the building in the central part of the Garden illustrated in Philip Miller’s 1730 catalogue.9

Watts lost no time in furnishing this house with tender species, some obtained via James Harlow whom he had despatched as a plant collector to Virginia. In 1682 Dr Paul Hermann, Professor of Botany at Leiden University, visited the Garden and suggested Watts should visit Holland to initiate a plant exchange for which the Society granted him £10.10 Watts’ subsequent visit in 1683 was extremely important in initiating the international botanic garden seed exchange (Index Seminum) system which still exists today. He also obtained four plants which were to define the view of the Chelsea Physic Garden for the following centuries: cedars of Lebanon, Cedrus libani. These were planted out at the four corners of the central water tank visible in Edward Oakley’s proposals of 1732 for a new greenhouse (a layout of the Garden possibly never completed).11 According to Philip Miller these plants were under 3 feet tall and there was some doubt about whether they would survive in a London where the Thames was apt to freeze over. As Sir Hans Sloane wrote to John Ray in March 1685: ‘One thing I much wonder to see, that the Cedrus montus libani, the inhabitant of a very different climate, should thrive here so well as without pot or greenhouse to be able to propagate itself by layers this spring.’12 One tree produced its first cone in 172513 and in subsequent years the seed was distributed widely all over Britain and even to William Bartram in America.14 The landscape of Britain’s aristocratic estates greatly benefited from these magnificent trees.

The appearance of the Garden from the river at this time would have been quite ornamental. Part of the agreement of 1685 between Watts and the Society, held at the Garden today, mentions ‘two large potts upon the pillers at the watergate, two large potts on the walls next to the pillers, twenty seven large potts standing upon the wall by the watergate and the capitalls by the stove.’ These are illustrated in Edward Oakley’s plan of 1732 and the fine watergate is shown in detail in A. Motte’s engraving which forms the frontispiece to Philip Miller’s catalogue of the medicinal plants published in 1730. The Reverend Dr Hamilton visited the Garden in 1691 and described what was obviously an ornamental layout. ‘Chelsea Physick Garden has a great variety of plants both in and out of greenhouses; their perennial green hedges and rows of different coloured herbs are very pretty; and so are the banks set with shades of herbs in the Irish stitch way.’

By 1690, however, it was clear that Watts’ other occupation, as a merchant adventurer trading as distantly as China, had increasingly kept him from his charge. Though he never married he became increasingly involved in his house and garden near Enfield which also had a greenhouse. The apothecary James Petiver wrote in March 1690 ‘at present the Physick Garden is but slenderly stocked . . . and is at a low ebb’.15