GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
Richmond, and (protected on one side by the river) is so out of 
the way that no trams or ’buses are likely to disturb its picturesque 
seclusion—it is a fact that no sooner was it known that Sir John 
had bought it, than someone in Hammersmith came to him and 
sought to purchase it from him, in order to turn it into a steam 
laundry ! 
No member of the Thornycroft family—a family distinguished 
both in art and engineering science, has resided at Walpole House 
—but one has made great use of the garden. Beautiful in itself, 
the garden gains in interest from the fact that the group in plaster 
of the well-known Boadicea group at Westminster, the work of 
the late Thomas Thornycroft, was housed for some time in a 
corrugated iron building erected in the garden in a spot at some 
distance from the house itself, which it is probable was formerly 
the playing-ground of Dr. Turner’s pupils. ‘‘ The Boadicea group,” 
to quote from a letter from Lady Thornycroft, “‘ was cast at 
Frome, but lived in plaster for some years in the building put 
up for it by my husband, until he could get a site given whereon 
it could be put up in bronze.” She also tells me, in this con- 
nection, that “‘ A really interesting fact is that my husband, feeling 
sure that motor vehicles would become general, started twenty-three 
years ago, ‘the Steam Wagon Company’ as a private enterprise; 
not in connection with the Church Wharf works where torpedo- 
boats, and destroyers were built. The Steam Wagon Co. has now 
become the motor works at Basingstoke, where the weekly turn-out 
is over twenty—sometimes thirty motor lorries a week, all of 
which are built for the Government, besides motors for boats 
for the Admiralty. ‘ Boadicea House,’ as we called the building, 
was the early workshop for the motor vehicles which took the 
place of the steam-driven lorries first made.” 
‘“‘ Boadicea House ”’ no longer exists—the site that once it stood 
on is now a stretch of green lawn—bordered with flowers—and 
separated from the tennis lawn by a pergola of considerable length, 
and of much beauty when the sun, shining through the trellised 
roof, sends flickering lights and shadows across the walk below. 
The erection of ‘‘ Boadicea House” in the rear of the garden 
must necessarily have destroyed its picturesqueness for a time, 
and corrugated iron in a Restoration garden seems incongruous. 
What would Evelyn have said to it ? 
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