13. Kitchen Garden and its history
Narrator:
MUSIC: Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses Levasseur to fade in at Once a week the cook had a conference
Fruit and vegetables have probably been grown in this area since the 16thcentury. Even in Bowles’ day the house was virtually self sufficient - with a strict rotation of crops. Potatoes, swedes, kale, lettuce, turnips and cabbage all grew here. As well as vegetables there were trained fruit trees, which supplied the house with apples, pears, plums, peaches and nectarines. Once a week the cook had a “conference” with Bowles, to discuss the meal requirements for the week ahead. The Head Gardener was issued with a list of fruit and veg, which an under-gardener gathered together and took to the kitchens by eleven o’clock each morning. But things did not always run so smoothly! Alfred Swatton, the head gardener here for over 40 years, kept an eagle eye on his kitchen garden. Early one morning he caught Mina, the Austrian cook, taking his best apples from the tree near his house.
MUSIC: Continues and runs under scene
Short scene:
Male voice shouts
SFX sound of feet running across gravel
MALE VOICE
Oi, you! What do you think you’re doing?
Narrator:
He was livid, and stormed out in his pyjamas to give her a piece of his mind! She never did it again.
Alfred Swatton & The Kitchen Gardens
Narrator: When Alfred Swatton came to Myddelton House from Kew Gardens, he and his family lived in Augustus Lodge, just outside the Kitchen Garden. Swatton worked here as head gardener for over 40 years – despite the fact that he and Bowles did not always see eye to eye.
Once a week Bowles would walk down into the Kitchen Garden for an update on how things were going. Fruit and veg weren’t the only things that were grown here: cut flowers were also grown in the Kitchen Garden. These were picked for the house, and for the local Church, where Bowles was churchwarden for many years. Cornflowers and Gladiolus were favourites, but there was also a large bed of white trumpeted, regal lilies. One gardener, Charlie Smith, remembered that Bowles always made a point of stopping to sniff the lilies . He would walk on, totally unaware that they had left his nose a pollen stained orange colour.
There used to be two vast compost heaps in the kitchen garden: one for fresh material and one for mature material. In winter it was not unusual to see four frozen gardeners standing in the steaming mature heap, warming their feet
School of Pharmacy and the Royal Free Hospital
Narrator:
After Bowles died in 1954, the estate was sold to the School of Pharmacy and the Royal Free Hospital. The Kitchen Garden was turned into a medicinal garden for teaching and research. A comprehensive collection of plants was propagated and grown here. These provided live material for undergraduate research. The western end of the Potting Shed, which is now the gardeners’ rest room, was converted into a laboratory. From here plant material was delivered to the School of Pharmacy in London. The whole operation was kept secret because a number of poisons and drugs – including cannabis - were grown here. For 48 years this was the site of important research into pain relief.