September 9, 1880. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 241 
the admiration and envy of every gardener in the neighbourhood. 
I know every place of note within many miles, but there is not 
one equal to Oakworth House : and should you think it worth 
while to come and see the place I shall be happy to communicate 
with Mr. Holden and make arrangements for going. Mr. Holden’s 
house is well worth going through. The air is renewed every half 
hour, and temperature kept at 60°. Twelve large boilers are in 
use. The winter garden has sixty rows of 4-inch pipes, in addition 
to coils of pipes. I have so often read of visits to gardens in the 
Journal that I concluded to write you.” This invitation was 
irresistible, and I found myself at 
OAKWORTH HOUSE. 
As the hot-water piping employed in an establishment is in 
some degree indicative of the extent of the glass structures, it may 
be well at the outset to publish a return under this head that I 
asked for and obtained. It is a plain unadorned statement by 
Mr. Holden’s plain, practical, and industrious gardener Mr. Shaw. 
“ The vineries contain 4000 feet of 4-inch pipes, heated by one of 
Weeks’s and one of Lumby’s (of Halifax) Paragon boilers. The 
other block of houses, containing Pine pits, plant-preparing houses, 
Ac., are heated with the same kind of boilers, and contain 7000 feet 
of piping. The winter garden is heated by the horizontal tubular 
boiler, and contains 7500 feet of piping. We are having another 
boiler put in to assist in severe weather or in case of a breakdown 
—one of Keith’s of Arbroath. The stoves, &c., adjoining the 
winter garden are heated by two of the horizontal tubulars (Byram’s 
of Bradford), and contain 11,000 feet of piping.” We have thus 
29,500 feet of 4-inch piping in one private establishment. That 
is extraordinary enough, and especially when considered with the 
fact that the owner of Oakworth House once worked for as low 
wages as perhaps any gardener has done who reads these lines. 
What a lesson this one life teaches ! It shows what may be 
accomplished by unflagging perseverance and a dogged determi¬ 
nation to achieve success. It shows the colliers’ boy, once receiv¬ 
ing the rudiments of education in a thatched cottage, and now 
occupying a princely home. It tells of his first earnings as 
“drawboy ” to hand weavers, of his studies at night-school after 
8 P.M., of his alternate term of work and school according as the 
means of his father permitted the latter, of his learning Latin and 
Greek and becoming a school teacher, of his studies in chemistry, 
of the great invention by which almost all the world benefits 
daily, yet not half the world knows to whom they are indebted 
for the simple yet important household necessity—the lucifer 
match. Others have reaped a rich reward in the manufacturing of 
this indispensable article, but to Isaac Holden belongs the honour 
of being the real inventor and first manufacturer as an aid to him 
in his night studies. As he explained before a Committee of the 
House of Commons the invention “cost him so little labour that he 
did not think it proper to get a patent, or no doubt it would have 
been profitable.” The “story” above referred to informs us that 
after becoming a dominie in Scotland Mr. Holden, then a young 
man, was appointed book-keeper to a manufacturing firm. How 
he brought his inventive powers to bear in the improvement of 
machinery of wool-ccmbing, how he pressed on and succeeded, 
founding three business establishments in France and one in 
England, and became the head of the greatest firm of the kind 
in the world, employing four thousand people, a number which 
equals the work of twenty-five thousand before machines were 
invented to do the work. Such is a bare skeleton outline of the 
career of this remarkable man, and his works prove he is good as 
well as great—a liberal benefactor to worthy objects, a hearty 
supporter of the religious denomination to which he belongs, a 
friend of the friendless, and a helper of the needy. Any notice of 
Oakworth House would be clearly incomplete without reference to 
its owner, and now having in the briefest possible manner given a 
faint idea of an extraordinarily successful career I will attempt a 
sketch of his home and garden. 
Oakworth is a small village about three miles from Keighley. 
Its position is elevated, and overlooks a broad dale. In the 
hollow nestles Haworth, the goal of many literary pilgrims, for it 
was in her father’s vicarage there that Charlotte Bronte wrote her 
name in history by the production of her famous work, “ Jane 
Eyre.” Beyond the plain are hills which meet the clouds, and 
the view is diversified and fine. Quite in the village of Oakworth 
—indeed, almost in a line with the cottages—is the Hall, the front 
of which is not more than 20 yards from the high road ; but the 
cottages on either side of the mansion are masked, on one side in 
a remarkable manner. A fine Wesleyan chapel is the boundary 
of the forecourt on one side of the mansion, and on the other side 
a huge rockery, rises in bold and rugged massiveness above the 
tops of the houses, the effect being wildly picturesque. This 
huge pile forms a covered way to the back of the mansion, the 
approach to which is through a cavern formed with blocks of 
gigantic size, and as rough and rude as if upheaved by some 
violent subterranean eruption. To subdue the effect of this great 
pile and to secure harmony of design immense stones half encircle 
the small panel garden, in which is a fountain, immediately facing 
the front portico, which has also a rock-like appearance ; on the 
opposite side there is a rustic summer-house made with cement 
and flanked with rock, one cavernous approach leading to the 
chapel and another to the winter garden, the doors being faced 
with cement, and resemble solid stone ; yet with all this stone 
the effect is neither harsh nor cold, for shrubs of upright and 
bush growth, low evergreens and trailing plants, have been freely 
yet judiciously planted, the result being a frontage which is unique 
of its kind, original in design, novel, striking, yet satisfying. 
A glimpse between the chapel and mansion is obtained of the 
winter garden. A large dome of richly stained glass rises from 
the centre ; there are also panels of stained glass on the sides 
near the roof, the spear-head-like ornamentation surmounting the 
spouting being gilded. The dome I understood was erected by 
Messenger of Loughborough ; but the building—indeed, all the 
glass structures, with the mansion—was designed by Mr. Smith, 
architect, of Bradford, a relative of Mrs. Holden’s, and executed 
under his supervision by local workmen. Externally this remark¬ 
able winter garden is rich and imposing, while internally its 
appearance is extraordinary. There are larger glass structures to 
be seen in a few public and private gardens, but none, so far as I 
am aware, like this in the manner of arrangement and ornamen¬ 
tation. As more space than can be afforded this week will be 
requisite for even a meagre description of this and the structures 
adjoining, further notes on Oakworth House must necessarily be 
postponed to a future issue.—A Rambler. 
TRUFFLES. 
1 sekd you a tuber that I have dug out of an Oak wood, and 
have been informed it is eatable, but its perfume does not com- 
Fig. 51.—Black Truffle. 
mend itself to me. Will you kindly inform me what it is, and if 
I have been correctly informed respecting its edible properties ? 
—A Berkshire Schoolmaster. 
[It is a fine specimen of the Black Truffle, and is correctly 
represented in the accompanying figure. Truffles are regarded as 
a choice dish on the tables of the affluent. They are generally- 
found in chalky or clayey chalk soils. Just as many aerial fungi 
only grow on dead wood, and that of a particular kind, so the 
black Truffle is only met with among the roots of trees, and more 
especially the common and Evergreen Oak, and Quercus coccifera. 
It is among the roots of these trees that the Truffles are most 
abundant, and acquire a perfume that makes them esteemed all 
over the world. 
Truffles increase like other allied fungi. When ripe they contain 
minute spores not exceeding 2 «oth of an inch in diameter, and 
when the Truffle decays in the ground these produce white threads, 
