Businesses

PGPT079
Date: 15th October 1842
Source: The Norwich Mercury newspaper

This advertisement was placed in the newspaper by Henry Trevor as he opened his shop in Exchange Street (then called Post-Office Street) which ran from the market square down to the river. The salesmanship is skilful: the wide range of products, their modernity, high quality and low prices, combined with promises of personal attention to a wide range of customers over a wide area are all such enticements as might be offered today. Today, though, a customer would not expect to have to read so many words in an initial approach! Henry Trevor also differs from modern practice with his strict insistence on ready money only!

Henry Trevor was only 23 when he set up shop on his own account. As the advertisement says he had been an assistant to Mr Gray, whose shop was nearby. Mr Gray was happy to support Henry who was about to marry his eldest daughter, the widow Mrs. Mary Page.

The business was very successful and it was in part the profit from this which enabled Henry to create the Plantation garden.

PGPT351
Date: 1850s
Source: History of the Norfolk and Norwich Horticultural Society (1929)

PGPT353
Date: 1850s
Source: J.C. Loudon’s Encylopedia of Gardening (1850)

Henry Trevor joined the N & N HS in the 1850s even before he started to create the Plantation garden. The society was founded in 1829, and early objectives seem as much charitable as horticultural. Members wanted ‘to raise the moral character of the poorer classes of the community’ and by presenting small prizes (medals, or a spoon or 16 shillings) to encourage them ‘to make the most of their small plots’ and reap ‘The Reward of Industry’ – the vegetables and flowers shown in the vignette. In 1889 and 1892 the Heigham HS held shows in the ‘charming and picturesque grounds’ of the Plantation.

J.C. Loudon’s Encylopedia of Gardening (1850), a very popular book which Henry Trevor must have known. Henry Trevor exhibited and won prizes in the Chrysanthemum shows held by the N & N HS.

PGPT051
Date: 1897
Source: Auction sale particulars

Spelman & Co, auctioneers, illustrated their particulars with photographs of many of the properties which were being sold by the executors of Henry Trevor. This photograph shows ‘The Beeches’, which HT built in the 1860s between his own dwelling house and the Earlham Rd. The conservatory, garden and thatched summerhouse (cf PGPT047 and 048) are visible. HT let the property to tenants. In 1897 the rent was £75 p.a.

In the early 1980s the property was leased to a Mr Hill, who converted it and the neighbouring Plantation house into a hotel.

PGPT067
Date: 1897
Source: Auction particulars, as in PGPT001

This shows the Plantation house which Henry Trevor completed in 1856 (date on Chimney) He was granted a 75 year lease of the land (a former quarry) from 1855, at a ground rent of £66 p.a.

A condition of the lease was that he was to build a house, by the spring of 1857, spending not less than £2000 – a very considerable sum at a time when a terrace house might cost £100. The style is firmly classical, with columned portico, pilasters at the corners. and pediment over the central bay. The quality of the building work is high, with fine pointing between the ‘white’ bricks (now grey). The windows of the upper storey have 12 panes, while on the ground floor the sash windows are glazed with plate glass.

PGPT066
Date: 1909
Source: Boulton and Paul 1909 catalogue (copy in Norfolk Record Office)

This photograph of the interior of the Palm House, built in 1895, at Carrow House, owned by the Colman family (of Colman’s Mustard fame), gives us the best idea we can have of the interior of the Palm House in the Plantation (PGPT003). We know from the 1897 auction particulars that the Plantation Palm House was fitted with a fountain, as shown here in the Carrow one.

Work began on the restoration of the Carrow House Palm House in 2004 (cf article EDP 13.05.2004, which reproduces a Boulton & Paul drawing of the outside).

Fragments of a Doulton fountain, very similar to the fountain in this photograph, were found on the lawn of the Beeches in the 1980s (), and it appears in 20c. photographs taken in that area (PGPT014 and 046).

PGPT072
Date: 19c
Source: Boulton & Paul catalogues, 1898 and others

The interest of this drawing of one pattern of cast iron cresting which Boulton & Paul could supply with its conservatories is that this design can be seen clearly along the edge of the Palm House in PGPT001.

PGPT011
Date: early 20c.
Source: Gunton Bros pamphlet with illustrations of their work

This photograph is labelled “Old work recently renewed by Gunton Bros for Lord Stafford”. Examples of the fleur de lys bricks shown on the shaft of the chimney, and the bosses on the base, are found in the Plantation Garden.

Lord Stafford owned Old Costessey Hall, where Gunton Bros started their brick manufacture.

PGPT058
Date: 1926
Source: Green family album

G.Colman Green, son of George Green, produced an album with photographs, newspaper cuttings and his own sketches to illustrate the life of his father. This sketch, signed and dated. is inscribed ‘entrance to the Plantation, Earlham Road, Norwich’, and a sentence added at the bottom saying ‘My father entertained many well-known people at this house including Lord Oxford (Mr Asquith) also many Ministers of Religion’.

PGPT065
Date: 1928
Source: Boulton & Paul catalogue (Rustic Work and log Cabins), Record office

We do not know whether the rustic summerhouse in the Plantation (cf) was made by Boulton & Paul, but this illustration from a later catalogue indicates that they had produced similar elaborate cabins, and as Henry Trevor purchased his Palm House from that firm it is quite possible that he also bought his summerhouse from them.

PGPT064
Date: 1928
Source: Boulton & Paul catalogue, no.132 and 133

OThe rustic bridges shown in these photographs are very similar to the rustic bridge in a 1930s photograph of the rustic bridge in the Plantation Garden (PGPT373). As Henry Trevor obtained his Palm House from Boulton and Paul, it is very probable that he also obtained his rustic bridge from the same firm.

PGPT023
Date: c.1930
Source: see below

This photograph was given to the Trust by Kathleen Barnard, great grand-daughter of Henry Trevor. It was taken by her father, Stanley Trevor, who was one of the two grandsons to whom Henry Trevor left the residue of his estate.

PGPT189
Date: 1980s
Source: photograph by John Watson, volunteer

In 1980 the remains of this fountain were found on the lawn beside the Plantation house (as in PGPT014) and removed by John Watson for repair. This work has never been completed and to date (2012) what remains is still in store.

There is some mystery about the history of this fountain. It was originally thought (Ex Fonte no.2 1981) that it had stood in the Palm house. However, in G.C.Green’s album of stories about his father, George Green (see PGPT058-063) there is a sketch, clearly recognisable as this fountain, labelled ‘Fountain added to the Plantation by Alderman Geo.Green’. What is more, in the photograph of the interior of the Carrow house conservatory (see PGPT066) the fountain there looks identical to this one. So did George Green buy it from the Colman family, or purchase an identical model?

PGPT111
Date: July 2007
Source: Photograph by volunteer

Set in the Italian terrace wall are 3 terracotta tiles with shields of arms, 2 small and identical, with a larger one below. Research in the early 1980s (see Ex Fonte no.4 p9) into the heraldry showed that the upper 2 tiles have arms which can be identified as belonging to particular families – Amherst, Daniel, Tyssen and Mitford. This tile, therefore, may have been commissioned by William Amhurst Tyssen-Amhurst (or Amherst), who married Margaret Mitford in 1856, and became M.P for Norfolk in the 1880s.

He lived at Foulden Hall, Didlington, which he enlarged in 1854 and 1856. It is possible that Gunton Bros made this tile for those building works as they made other heraldic tiles for the Bedingfeld family at nearby Oxburgh Hall in the 1840s. Tiles from the latter are found in the garden (see PGPT ).

PGPT112
Date: July 2007
Source: Photograph by volunteer

View on to the steps and slopes of the Italian Terrace taken from the East.

The terrace does not have a date built in like the ‘medieval’ wall at the other end of the garden, but it seems likely that Henry Trevor built it at an early stage, c1860: he would not have wanted to leave the bare wall of chalk at the end of his quarry garden exposed, he would have wanted to gain access to the higher ground at the South end to gain a ‘belvedere’, and there are 2 bricks with the moulded letter ‘F’ built in to various parts of the walls here which remind us that his brother, Frederick Francis, died in 1860 and may be commemorated here – there are no other individual letter bricks in the garden.

PGPT113
Date: July 2007 (?)
Source: Photograph by volunteer

These ‘bunch of grapes’ bricks are built into the walls shown in PGPT112. They were made, like so many of the ‘fancy’ bricks in the garden, in the the workshops of Gunton Bros of Costessey. This design can also be seen on houses in the Street at Costessey.

The Gunton family brickmaking business grew rapidly from its beginnings early in the 19c, when the work of making bricks for the medieval Costessey Hall gave them the opportunity to make the medieval styles which became so popular in the mid 19c.

PGPT115
Date: July 2007
Source: Photograph by volunteer

There was an unfortunate incident during a hot spell in 2007 when a young bird was so eager to drink that it fell in to the fountain and was drowned. John Gibling, a volunteer, made this leaf shaped lead bird bath for the top of the rockworks in the hope of preventing other such accidents.

Bird nesting boxes have been provided in the garden too, and many birds live there. The dawn chorus has been much enjoyed by the brave souls who listen to it at 4a.m on a summer morning!

PGPT133
Date: October 2008
Source: Photograph by volunteer

In 1842 Henry Trevor opened a furnishing business in Norwich (see PGPT079). The business flourished, first under Trevor’s own name, later as Trevor and Page when he took his eldest stepson into partnership (see PGPT007,106). eventually the name was shortened to Trevor Page. The business was finally closed in 1983, by which time it had been under the control of Hodge for some years. Hodge preserved the sign which had hung outside the shop, relocated to Queen Street, together with its iron support. The sign had been repainted by the firm in the 20c: the support may date back to the 19c.

Hodges donated the sign to the PGPT, and it was decided to restore and erect it in the entrance yard, together with an information board about the history of Trevor Page.

PGPT239 and PGPT240
Date: 2008
Source: Photographs by Dubravka Yarwood

One of the many bedding schemes devised by the planting sub-committee twice a year and carried out by Marjorie Wilson and the volunteers who came on the twice yearly Planting Days.

PGPT247
Date: 2009
Source: photograph by volunteer

BACK TO ARCHIVE

The 1883 map shows that Henry Trevor’s design included many flights of steps to exploit the different levels of the garden, so as to make interesting walks and give varied views from above onto the colourful flower beds below. Many of these flights have been lost, some have been restored, and some await repair. This flight, to the East of the rustic summerhouse at the top of the Italian terrace, was rebuilt by Doug Stewart and Graham Pierce.