“Botany, an elegant and interesting study, has lately become a favourite pursuit among the higher classes of the community; and the attention to forcing of plants, flowers, and fruits, for the table, has increased the demand for Horticultural Buildings of every description.” so begins an illustrated book of designs of hot-houses first published in 1807.

The author, George Tod,  hoped  “this Collection of Plans now offered to the Public, will be found an acceptable production, as various specimens of the different kinds are given, suitable to most situations; viz. Green-houses, Houses for forcing Flowers, Roses, &c.Conservatories, Pineries, Peacheries, and Vineries.”

Unlike almost all  the other pattern books of garden buildings published in the 18th and 19thc centuries Tod was proud to say  that ” no speculative or experimental designs are here shewn; but such only as have been actually built,”  so  readers who were considering having a hothouse or conservatory built were encouraged to go and see one of his commissions which were ” dispersed throughout different parts of the kingdom,” for clients who were “noblemen and gentlemen in their several neighbourhoods”.

So were these clients, and for that matter who was George Tod, and why isn’t he better known?

 

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that George Tod has left virtually no trace of his existence other than this book and any surviving buildings that he designed and built.  He describes himself on the title page as a “surveyor and hot-house builder” living on  Kings Road, Chelsea at or very near Sloane Square. That is almost our sum total of knowledge.  Rummaging in the British Newspaper Archive and elsewhere only bought up one additional fact, which will be revealed later.

Greenhouse design altered radically in late Georgian Britain.  Humphry Repton  in his Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), explained how and why: “Whereas earlier only orange trees and myrtles, or a very few other green-house plants, were introduced” as a result “no light was required in the roof of such buildings, in many of them, indeed, the piers between each window are as large as the windows.  Since that period, the numerous tribe of geraniums, ericas, and other exotic plants, requiring more light, have caused a very material alteration in the construction of the green-house; and perhaps the more it resembles the shape of a nursery-man’s stove, the better it will be adapted to the purposes of a modern green-house.” As a result Repton himself  worked at Dyrham and Wimpole amongst other places  replacing the solid roofs of their orangeries with glass.

The increasing number of available “exotic” plants were accompanied by  industrial and technical advances in both iron and glass which made them standard building materials and allowed more innovative designs possible.  Despite the tax on glass,  having a cool greenhouse, let alone  a hothouse, became a luxury status symbol.   After all as Repton wrote in Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816) : “of all the improvements in modern luxury, whether belonging to the Architect’s or Landscape Gardener’s department, none is more delightful than the connection of living-rooms with a green-house or conservatory”.  Architects, builders and publishers tried to cash in on this and   a large number of  pattern books appear during this period.

So what made Tod’s book  different?  The most obvious point  is that 18 of the projects included were those that he had designed and overseen him. The other 8 were building designed and built by William Aiton director of the royal gardens at  Kew.  While other authors “suggest new improvements on Horticultural Buildings and had even obtained patents for them” Tod  warns many of them “have been found impracticable in the execution, and the principles of their construction abandoned.”

One such was , I surmise, the “Conservatory executed or rather altered for W.Gosling Esq.,” at his villa in Roehampton. It had originally been built with  “a slated roof, which is found to be injurious to the growth of plants.” This was replaced with glass. The flue, heating system and ventilation system were all altered as well  so that  the conservatory may now be said to be complete.  It was now fitted with  treillage work screens and panels for climbing plants, an aviary in one corner and a fountain in the middle  so that “whole is finished in a manner superior to most buildings of this description.”

Instead Tod’s “improvements”…have chiefly been gathered in the course of a long practice in this particular kind of employment, and have arisen from practical observations of his own, aided by the suggestions of many gardeners, eminent in their profession.”  This might sound like an idle boast but his location on Sloane Square put him close to many of the leading nurseries of the day. With a few minutes walk he’d have been able to visit businesses run by John Fraser , James Colville, and Thomas Davey all of whom I’m fairly sure he would  have known. He also obviously knew William Aiton, who perhaps he had met through Sir Jospeh Banks, who  was one  of his clients.

As you might expect one of the most important considerations for a hothouse is the efficiency of its heating system. Tod spends time explaining his suggested improvements to the design and construction of the heating flue claiming that his ideas are “founded on the most simple principles, unconnected with any of those complex and unintelligible schemes which generally have led gentlemen who have adopted them to a great expence, and yet ultimately have failed in their purpose.” That’s because his are based on  “the information he has collected from gardeners, who may be presumed to be the best judges for appreciating the merits or demerits of such buildings”. Others are to do with using putty or lead between the glazing on the roofs of glasshouses, and using “light and elegant” timber work especially on the construction of the roof.   He backs all this up with a page of technical details and another page of sketches

Now let’s take a look at some of the examples that he has selected.[You’ll be pleased to hear not all 26] beginning with properties in and around London. As is common with such books the text describing the various structures comes first with the plates showing sectional views, plan, and elevation following. Twelve of the designs were for gentlemen and the remaining 14 for titled clients.

The first is for a curved extension to the house of William Linwood in Hackney, reached via his library – rather as suggested by  Humphry Repton sketch in Fragments.  It’s 54 ft long and 13ft wide and divided into a large greenhouse with the normal kind of staging for display and a smaller  “exotic house” with a pit for plunging plants into “tan” [the spent bark from leather tanneries which generates gentle, prolonged heat for tropical plants like pineapples]. The windows are sliding sashes.

The ability to go into the greenhouse directly from the house is clearly an important factor in the designs for quite a few of the other examples. John Jackson’s  in Hammersmith is similar in design to Linwood’s, and opens off his drawing room. However both parts of the 65 foot structure are planned runs pits for exotics.

Curved conservatories, admittedly on a grander scale, were becoming very fashionable in the 1790s and there is an interesting article  by Rebecca Tropp ” ‘The most original and interesting part of the design’: The attached quadrant conservatory at the dawn of the nineteenth century”. In it she argues that “the conservatory came to occupy a key position in newly built houses, directly accessible from adjacent polite rooms and serving as both social and botanical spaces for owners and their guests. Not only did these plant-filled rooms become central to the quotidian life of the household but, through their extensive walls of glass, they allowed for greater visual enjoyment and physical movement between the house and its garden setting.”

 

In central London George Farrant also  reached  his hot-house via his  drawing room, even though puzzlingly that was on the first floor of his house. In fact it was constructed on a wooden platform eleven feet above the backyard. This could cause some obvious practical problems so the floor was paved with tiles “bedded in Roman cement, to prevent the water, when watering the plants, from filtering through.”

It had a furnace below and a flue that went into the greenhouse and then out by a circuitous route a chimney at roof level.

It might look a bit Heath Robinson but according to Tod  “the whole has a novel and pleasant appearance from the drawing-room, particularly in the evening when lighted with lamps.”

 

Also in central London  John Elliot of Pimlico had a very grand double height conservatory added to his garden. A similar size to Linwood’s it served a double purpose – not only for the display of his plant collection but also to hide adjacent buildings.  Its very much in the style of a much earlier 18thc greenhouse because the roof is solid rather than glass which Tod says is “not generally to be recommended ; but as it was built for the purpose above mentioned, the objections were overruled” The column and entablature which were presumably of iron  were “painted and sanded in imitation of stone. The whole is finished in a superior manner.”

Further out on West Hill Wandsworth a wealthy London merchant, banker and plantation owner  of German extraction, John AnthonyRucker built a new mansion in the late 1790s. William Aiton designed an enormous glasshouse range which  stretched to 240 ft and was divided into six main sections  for peaches, nectarines and cherries, two large pits for pineapples and two vineries.  It was constructed with cast iron columns and required no less than two fires for each house  for the heating system. Aiton must have become involved soon after the house was built  because Rucker died 1804. and the property was acquired by the  Marquess of Stafford. It now forms the centrepiece of the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability.

 

 

 

 

Moving to properties outside London, let’s begin with another  huge new mansion built in the very late 1790s for the Libenroods, a German emigre family. This was Prospect Hall  in Reading, now a public park.  Tod added a greenhouse which looks as it was freestanding but I can’t see any trace of it today.

 

 

 

Not all the designs were unusual or even that large. To my surprise the one built Whiteknights for the spendthrift plantaholic Marquis of Blandford, although freestanding was fairly standard both in size and design. [For more on Whiteknights and its garden see this earlier post]

Apart from those greenhouses built with direct access from the house itself, if they were not stand-alone constructions, the other main location was in a walled kitchen garden. They were usually placed against a wall with the stokeholes and furnaces on the other side of the wall. Tod clearly didn’t want to waste an acceptable design, so the one he designed  at Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire was almost identical to the Rockbeare example, and also to the one that William Aiton  built for Lord Heathfield at Nutwell Court in Devon, although there the interior was clearly something. rather special. [I wonder who copied who?] The same kind of  trellised interior can be seen in the small conservatory built at Powderham Castle for Viscount Courteney. An even grander variation, with a semi-circular centrepiece,  was built at Holy Grove Windsor for Lady Jennings Clarke, extracts of which I  used in the opening to this post.

 

 

Important clients did not necessarily get anything more magnificent. William Aiton built a conventional pinery for Sir Joseph Banks at  Spring Bank, his home in Isleworth. Of course having Kew at his disposal Banks probably didn’t need much more.  Aiton also built a fairly standard greenhouse for Queen Charlotte at Frogmore. [For more on the gardens at Frogmore see this earlier post] 

 

 Tod’s book was priced at £2. 12s. 6d. which was expensive but the folio  plates had  hand-coloured aquatints which were enormously costly to produce. It was praised for giving  examples that could be reproduced “by any ingenious workman”. A second edition appeared in 1812 and a third in 1823.

Much earlier in the post I said that while almost nothing was known of Tod I had uncovered just one additional fact : he was made bankrupt in April 1804.  I wonder if the book first published 3 years later was an attempt to raise funds to clear his debts. If so it seems to have been successful because in 1808 he paid out a dividend to his creditors. If anyone knows more about  Mr Tod please let me know because after this he seems to have disappeared from the documentary record.

To finish on a really happy note. While the various structures shown in the book have all vanished one which wasn’t featured has just been restored to its former glory by its new owner none other than Todd Longstaffe-Gowan.  I won’t try and steal his thunder by telling you about it because  it has been written up in The World of Interiors. One look at the impeccably restored interior below should make sure you click on that link immediately!