1871 – ‘High Leigh’, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire

High Leigh, on the outskirts of Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, is only just over a mile from the Pulham Manufactory in Broxbourne.   The owner was Robert Barclay, a member of the famous banking dynasty.   Over the generations, his ancestors had married into a number of other banking families, and Robert was responsible for merging twenty banks into Barclay and Company Ltd. [i]   He would almost certainly have known James 2 personally, because his family had been leading members of the Quaker fraternity for many years – as, I am sure, were the Pulhams – and they probably attended the same Friends Meeting House in Hoddesdon. Continue reading →

1909 – Ardross Castle, Alness, Ross-Shire

James Pulham and Son did not create very many gardens in Scotland, but one in which they were involved was right up in the north-east – at Ardross Castle, in Alness, Ross-shire.   At the beginning of the 20^th century, Ardross Castle was the summer retreat of Charles Dyson Perrins, Director of the family firm of Lee and Perrins, makers of the famous Worcestershire Sauce.   Perrins’ main home was in Malvern, Worcestershire, where he engaged James 3 to landscape his gardens c1901-05, with one of its most striking features being a Pulhamite-lined tunnel – complete with a liberal scattering of ‘stalactites’ – that ran beneath a road that separated two parts of the garden.   Continue reading →

1871 - ‘Titsey Place’, Oxted, Surrey

Granville W.G. Leveson Gower – an amateur historian, archaeologist and antiquarian – inherited ‘Titsey Place’, near Oxted, Surrey, during the late 19^th century, and laid out the framework of the gardens, ‘joining the lakes together, and giving the lakes more of a “naturalistic” shape.’ [i]   The lakes are fed from a chalybeate spring that bubbles up from under a rock in the middle of the gardens, and flows through a stream into the top lake, and then tumbles over a waterfall, under a stone bridge, and into the lower lake.  Continue reading →

1895-99  -  St James’s Park, London

One of Pulhams’ smaller works in public parks during the 1890s was in St James’s Park, London.   The land here used to be a swamp, subject to flooding from the Tyburn stream, which still flows through the lake.   Henry VIII acquired it in 1532, and enclosed it for the hunt.   It became a fashionable promenade for London’s high society in the 18^th century and, in 1838, it was completely re-designed by John Nash in the English landscaping style that he had learned through his association with Humphry Repton. Continue reading →

1866 - Bedwell Park, Essendon, Hertfordshire

Bedwell Park was the home of Robert Hanbury, son of Robert Hanbury Snr, who was a Senior Partner in the firm of Truman, Hanbury and Buxton, one the leading brewing firms in London.   Robert Snr lived at Poles Park – a few miles away near Ware – where James Pulham and Son had worked in 1865.   Shortly before his early death (at the age of 44) in 1867, Robert Jnr commissioned James 2 to construct a: Continue reading →

1898-99 – Sunningdale Park, Ascot, Berkshire

Sunningdale Park is situated in what once used to be part of Windsor Great Park, and still contains a Spanish Chestnut tree – with a girth in excess of twenty feet! – that dates back to the time of Henry VIII.   James Wyatt built the first house at Sunningdale in 1785, and, over the years, this was rebuilt and enlarged by its successive owners until Major William James Joicey - of the Northern mining family – bought it in 1890. Continue reading →

1858 - Ponsbourne Manor, Newgate Street, Hertfordshire

This month’s Site of the Month is one of James 2’s earlier assignments.   One of the very first ferneries he constructed was built in 1858, in the basement of Ponsbourne House, in the village of Newgate Street, near Hertford, Hertfordshire – just a few miles away from his new manufactory in Broxbourne.   Ponsbourne was then the home of Mr J Levick, and became St Dominic’s Priory just after World War 2.   It then became a hotel, before being taken over by Tesco Plc as a Management Training Centre.   It is currently a hotel run by the de Vere Group. Continue reading →