Up the Garden Path (Part 1)

I like a bit of a trail. 

It usually starts with a snippet of information or a subject that catches my imagination. 

This could a paragraph in a newspaper or magazine, a blue heritage plaque on a wall, the name of someone I have never heard of before or something from deep in my own memory bank. 

All of these strands have provided the source and inspiration for my daily blog ramblings over what is now approaching 6 years continuous (give or take and with some re-issues if I am tired or busy). 

I continue to be excited by such discoveries and in the anticipation of where they might lead me. 

So, you can appreciate the stirring of my curiosity from coming across a strangely worded and vague sentence in one of my frequently consulted books, the thick volume on The Buildings of England covering York and the East Riding by Nikolaus Pevsner (1972). 

I nearly skipped over the throwaway line during a quick scan of the entries for a small rural village in pursuit of the details on a specific house, the former Rectory which a family member had just visited. 

She had been enthused by the place and as usual my Pevsner, whereas others are similarly drawn to Baedeckers or Bradshaw, was hauled off its shelf in an attempt to impress her with further facts. 

The sentence worthy, in my mind, of investigation read;

“A persistent local tradition attributes the design of the garden in the 1840’s to Joseph Paxton”. 

I am not sure what actually constitutes a “persistent local tradition”. 

It sounds almost maniacal or fringing on criminality as in a tendency for the villagers to regularly throw stones at strangers in the vicinity or in the context of the rest of the sentence there may be some suggestion that the residents are habitual fibbers. 

However, the most important part of the sentence is in the name, Joseph Paxton, or to give him his full title, Sir Joseph Paxton. 

In the Victorian era he was everywhere. A leading book about Paxton describes him as “The busiest man in England”.

Self made Landscape Gardener, Architect, Member of Parliament and shrewd Investor are amongst his main personal accomplishments but three of his principal projects elevated him to celebrity status in his time.

These were the setting out of the palatial gardens at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, the design of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the cultivation of the world’s most popular species of banana. 

There would be significant reflected glory for a small village if one of its handful of properties had a validated link with this most famous of personalities. 

My own attempts to confirm this claim have so far drawn a blank. 

As is a common phrase I have been led up the garden path. 

Short of confronting those in the village with any archived solid proof, as in an authenticated blueprint of the design, monogrammed trowel or etched graffiti on a wall my own enquiries through multiple and authoritative routes has drawn a complete blank. 

I really would like to think that the link is a true one, capable of provenance. I hope that it is not a fiction concocted by certain members of the 1840's village population as some sort of attempt at extracting cash from those who made a leisure activity out of visiting the sites and vistas created by Joseph Paxton.......( to be continued).