A REMARKABLE EXPANSION 89 



economic conditions already dealt with, the average 

 housewife can now, for instance, supplement the Sunday 

 dessert with English hot-house grapes, at from 6d. 

 to a is. or is. 6d. a pound, which, not so many years 

 ago, would have cost from 53. to ios., and been found 

 only on the rich man's table. 



It is in the south-east corner of Hertfordshire, on the 

 northern borders of the Metropolis, in the Valley of the 

 Thames, and along the Sussex coast, that the expansion 

 of culture under glass has been most in evidence in 

 England. Mr. Bear, in the Journal of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society, tells how thirty years ago only one 

 nurseryman at Cheshunt, Herts, had a hot-house, 

 whereas there are now at least 125 acres covered with 

 glass in that parish alone. At Ponders End, near to 

 Cheshunt, the increase in the same period has been 

 a thousandfold. At Finchley twenty - five years 

 ago there was ' no glass worth mentioning.' To-day 

 there is one nurseryman, without mentioning others, 

 who alone has 19^ acres, though this would make 

 quite a small show alongside the 130 acres of glass with 

 which a firm elsewhere are credited. In the Thames 

 Valley the comparatively few ventures of a quarter of a 

 century ago have expanded into a vast enterprise. 

 There has been a remarkable development also at 

 Mitcham, Swanley, Erith, Bexley Heath, Chelmsford, 

 and other parts of the country. 



Passengers by the Great Eastern Railway to South- 

 end may have noticed that there is a station at Ray- 

 leigh, an Essex village of 1,773 inhabitants ; but very 

 few of them, probably, know that from this one village 

 there have been despatched in the course of a year 

 334 tons of cucumbers, 55 tons of tomatoes, and 78 

 tons of fruit, all grown under glass, in addition to a 

 small tonnage of cut flowers and mushrooms, grown in 



