200 FOTHERGILL'S BOTANIC GARDEN CHAP* 



bryanthemum alone. 1 The house at Upton was at a 

 later date much enlarged, and under the name of Ham 

 House became the hospitable home of Samuel Gurney, 

 who kept up the garden and part of the grounds. His 

 sister Elizabeth Fry lived hard by, in a house which is 

 still standing. Ham House was pulled down in 1872, 

 and its grounds now constitute West Ham Park, an 

 open space of 80 acres, surrounded by the teeming popu- 

 lation of this eastern suburb. 



The author visited the park on an autumn afternoon. 

 The site of Fothergill's house, afterwards Gurney's, is 

 marked by a large cairn, bearing an inscription ; a long 

 series of conservatories once opened from its southern 

 side, and extended to the west. The garden walls are 

 gone, including that on the north, under which Fothergill 

 grew his American plants. There are velvet lawns, 

 old trees and abundant shrubs, with borders of flowers. 

 The winding canal has long been filled up, but its course 

 can still be traced, and there is a picturesque bridge 

 across it. The " wilderness " was to the east of the 

 garden. Here is an ancient cedar which may perhaps 

 date from Fothergill's period. Of other trees the most 

 interesting, and one rare at that time, is a gingko, or 

 maidenhair tree of Japan, the gymnosperm Salisburia 

 adiantifolia Sm., which was once trained against the front 

 of the house ; its trunk, 6 feet in girth at the base, is still 

 flattened on the side. This tree is mentioned by Loudon 

 in 1838 : it was then, he says, 33 feet high, and had 

 flowered about the year 1796. There is every reason to 

 believe that this beautiful old tree with its fern-like 

 leaves was of Fothergill's own planting. Near to it is 

 an ancient Euonymus, carefully supported and probably 

 of the like period, as is also a weeping ash, bowed, 

 truncated, but still magnificent even in decrepitude ; 

 its huge bole is bent into zigzags. Several old oaks 

 seem to be of the same age or earlier, and this applies 



1 See Catalogue of Hothouse and Greenhouse Plants, etc., late the property of 

 J. Fothergill, 1781 ; three days of sale. Sir J. Banks' copy, the items priced 

 apparently in his hand, is in the British Museum, as is Lettsom's copy of 

 Hortus Uptonensis with MS. notes. See also J. Stokes, Comment. 



