The Apothecaries' Garden: A History of the Chelsea Physic Garden

by Sue Minter

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780752495279
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	09/30/1996
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	674 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

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The Apothecaries' Garden

A History of the Chelsea Physic Garden

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By Sue Minter

The History Press

Copyright © 2013 Sue Minter with research by Ruth Stungo
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9527-9

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CHAPTER 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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'.

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' 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. This stove is possibly the building in the central part of the Garden illustrated in Philip Miller's 1730 catalogue.

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. 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). 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.' One tree produced its first cone in 1725 and in subsequent years the seed was distributed widely all over Britain and even to William Bartram in America. 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'.

In August 1692 Watts relinquished the Garden's care to the apothecary Samuel Doody. The years of confusion over what were the Garden's and what were Watts' plants were resolved by a committee. Doody then undertook the care and expense of the Garden at £100 a year on a short lease and a list of plants was compiled, revealing that the Garden not only held a stock of orange trees, but a considerable quantity of topiary and hedging in yew, holly, box and juniper. Doody died in 1706, at which point serious consideration was given to relinquishing the Garden in its entirety.

In 1707 a committee was set up to oversee the welfare of the Garden, whose finances continued to be extremely uncertain. Some ninety apothecaries were asked to subscribe support but the appeal failed due to many defaulters. Expenses continued to rise and in 1715 the badly decayed barge was put up for sale. During the period 1714 to 1722 no gardener was mentioned by name. The Demonstrator at this time, James Petiver (1664–1718), seems to have been increasingly important in the running of the Garden from about 1709. This position, the Demonstrator of Plants, had been established by the early 1700s and contained two elements. One was to attend the Garden monthly in the summer to 'demonstrate' plants to the apprentices and to explain their names and their medicinal uses. The second was to organize the yearly herborizing available to all members of the Society and their friends. Petiver held frequent herborizing expeditions around Hampstead with Samuel Doody and Adam Buddle (after whom the genus Buddleja is named). He produced a list of the plants of Middlesex and three volumes commencing Botanicum Londinense or the London Herbal. The Monthly Miscellany or Memoirs for the Curious 1707–9. This interest in the native flora presaged the later work at Chelsea of individuals such as William Hudson and William Curtis. Petiver also published twenty-one papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society between 1697 and 1717 and is credited, like his contemporary John Ray, with attempts to classify plants according to natural characteristics (long before Linnaeus) and also to classify herbs as to their medical virtues. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1695. There are relatively few records of the plants growing in the Chelsea Physic Garden before 1722, those we do have coming often from the reports of visitors to the Garden. One of the most useful sources is the series of papers published by Petiver in the Philosophical Transactions between 1710 and 1714. In these papers Petiver enumerates the 'curious plants' he had observed growing in the gardens near London. He gave particular prominence to the Apothecaries' Garden at Chelsea. For example, he records Erodium ciconium being cultivated in the garden in 1711.

A manuscript found in the British Library (Sloane MS 3370, ff. 14–19) lists all the plants being grown in the Garden on 12 November 1706, both outside and in the glasshouses. It is the first known record of the entire contents of the Garden. Mention is made in this list of three species of Geranium. All three were probably species of what we now know as pelargoniums and reveal interest in a genus which is today a subject of major taxonomic research at the Garden. Two have been tentatively identified: Pelargonium gibbosum (recorded as Geranium aquilegiae fol., growing in the heated stove) and what was probably P. capitatum (recorded as Geranium malvae fol. rot., growing in the greenhouse) but could also be P. inquinans. The third has proved impossible, so far, to identify. Pelargonium gibbosum is usually said to have been introduced into cultivation in Britain in 1711, making the Chelsea Physic Garden record a first, if it does indeed relate to this species. Pelargonium capitatum was introduced into Britain in 1690 by the Earl of Portland, and has long been cultivated as a source of rose-scented oil of geranium. Stems and leaves of P. inquinans are pounded and used as a headache and cold remedy by tribes in South Africa, but of greater significance for gardeners is that it is one of the parents of today's garden hybrid scarlet 'geraniums' used for summer display. Three centuries later the value of the world trade in potted pelargoniums proved to be 1.4 billion US dollars (1998). Major industries from small seeds grow ...

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Apothecaries' Garden by Sue Minter. Copyright © 2013 Sue Minter with research by Ruth Stungo. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

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,