|
In 1825 the Duke of Devonshire, the then President of the Royal Horticultural Society, offered Joseph Paxton the job of gardener and subsequently agent and forester at Chatsworth. Paxton was a good businessman as well as a great garden designer and turned the Chatsworth Estate into a profitable business. He also remodeled the village of Edensor, on the Estate.
He was born in Milton Bryan in 1803 and as far as we know, attended school in Woburn. His first gardening job as a boy was for the 6th Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey. He then helped his brother at Battlesden, worked at Woodhall Park in Watton, Hertfordshire, and for the Duke of Somerset at Wimbledon.
In the 1840s he designed the 125-acre public park in Birkenhead, Cheshire, the inspiration for Central Park, New York, and built the great glass conservatory at Chatsworth, which led to his contract for the building to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 and his knighthood. After the Exhibition, the Crystal Palace was moved, under Paxton’s supervision, to Sydenham in South London, where it stood until it was destroyed by fire in 1936.
In 1860 Paxton returned home to build Battlesden House in the French chateau style, at a cost of £40,000, a fortune at that time. But in 1885 the 9th Duke of Bedford bought the house plus the 3,000 acres that went with it and pulled down the house, leaving only the stable block and the laundry. Joseph Paxton died at his home in Sydenham in 1865 so did not live to see his great house destroyed.
The article was written by Gill Green. |
