Today is the anniversary of Sir Joseph Paxton who was born on 3rd August 1803 in Milton Bryan Bedfordshire. The seventh son of a farmer and small landowner, Paxton was the creator of the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth House and the Crystal Palace built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Without him it is unlikely that the Victorian enthusiasm for Conservatory gardening would have been so considerable, so we need to pay him a small homage.
Early Years
Joseph Paxton started as a garden boy when he was fifteen working for Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner at Battlesden House, near Woburn and there he created a lake, his first piece of landscaping work.
He was only 20 when he began working at the Horticultural Society’s Chiswick Gardens which was leased by the Horticultural Society from William Cavendish the 6th Duke of Devonshire who had a London home nearby at Chiswick House.
Impressed with his abilities, skill and enthusiasm the Duke appointed Joseph Paxton head gardener at Chatsworth House in 1826, the Devonshire family’s large country house in Derbyshire.
His arrival at Chatsworth is a famous story, best told in his own words:
“I left London by the Comet Coach for Chesterfield; and arrived at Chatsworth at half-past four o’clock in the morning of the ninth of May, 1826. As no person was to be seen at that early hour, I got over the greenhouse gate by the old covered way, explored the pleasure grounds and looked round the outside of the house. I then went down to the kitchen gardens, scaled the outside wall and saw the whole of the place, set the men to work there at six o’clock; then returned to Chatsworth and got Thomas Weldon to play me the water works and afterwards went to breakfast with poor dear Mrs Gregory and her niece, the latter fell in love with me and I with her, and thus completed my first morning’s work at Chatsworth before nine o’clock.”
Paxton accompanied the Duke on extended trips to the Continent, to provide further horticultural and initial gentlemanly education and supported him with the labourers, money and time to support his greenhouse experiments.
The Duke said of Paxton, “that (he) will be forever connected with Chatsworth,” and talked how much the gardener admired nature and yet controlled it and his ability to balance oppositions. He called him, “the least obtrusive of servants” and “a friend if ever man had one.”
At Chatsworth Paxton built the Emperor Fountain, named for Czar Nicholas I of Russia who was due to visit Chatsworth in 1844 but who never arrived to see the great masterpiece. For many decades it was the tallest gravity-fed fountain in the world and could reach a height of almost 300 feet.
Paxton’s Conservatories
But Paxton will be best remembered for his conservatories. In 1837, Paxton started the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth, a huge cast-iron heated glasshouse, at the time the largest glass building in the world. It cost over £30,000 to build and was heated by eight boilers using seven miles of iron pipe. When Queen Victoria was driven through it, it was lit with twelve thousand lamps. She noted in her diary in 1842 that it is “the most stupendous and extraordinary creation imaginable”.
Paxton also built a conservatory to house the growing of a water lily. These had never flowered in England before and it took a large conservatory and great quantities of water and heat to create the atmosphere in which the lily would grow and eventually flower.
The Great Exhibition
Sir Joseph Paxton
Paxton’s experiments and building made him an expert in conservatory design and construction and when a building was required to house the Great Exhibition in 1851, Paxton was on hand to come up with a design that he sketched for the organisers on a piece of blotting paper. It took 2,000 men eight months to build what became known as the Crystal Palace, was 1,851ft long, higher than Westminster Abbey and contained 293,635 panes of glass.
Paxton’s was now a famous man of the age and Queen Victoria wrote about him on the opening of the Great Exhibition, “He rose from an ordinary gardener’s boy!“ In October 1851 Paxton was knighted by Queen Victoria.
The Duke of Devonshire continued in his praise of Paxton and continued to help him in his endeavours whether by giving him free reign over his gardening work and the great expense of labour costs and construction and heating of the conservatories. He also allowed Paxton to expand his cottage in the kitchen gardens at Chatsworth into a gentleman’s Italianate Villa.
On 25th March 1851, the Duke wrote in his diary, “Gave Paxton £1000 towards house and offices for his innumerable benefits to me. Enchanted with Paxton.”
Paxton remained Head Gardener at Chatsworth, but took on other projects, working on the layout of public parks and the design of various country houses, including Mentmore Towers Mentmore Towers for Baron Mayer de Rothschild. His involvement in public and municipal ventures led him to being elected as Liberal Member of Parliament for Coventry in 1854.
Paxton’s Publishing Career
Paxton also had a considerable writing and publishing career. In 1831 he became the founding editor of the Horticultural Register and between 1834 and 1849 he published Paxton’s Magazine of Botany. This monthly magazine was highly prized for the brilliant colours of the plates and the beauty of the plants illustrated and sold for two shillings.
In 1838 he wrote A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of the Dahlia” followed in 1840 with The Pocket Botanical Dictionary written with John Lindley professor of Botany at the University College London and Britain’s pioneer orchidologist.
John Lindley had been the first editor of The Gardener’s Chronicle first published in 1841 and which continued to appear for nearly 150 years. Paxton also became an editor and prominent contributors included Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker.
By 1851, the circulation of The Gardeners Chronicle was 6,500. It had a large advertising section and with the interest aroused by the Crystal Palace many ads appeared for domestic greenhouses to take advantage of this popularity. Paxton was behind many of these designs and added to his income.
Paxton and Lindley also published The Flower Garden. The goal of which was “To supply, in monthly parts, as full an account of all the new and remarkable plants introduced into cultivation as is necessary to the horticulturalist.” This was also published in three volumes, , with 108 hand coloured plates.
Many of these publications are available through antiquarian and specialist gardening booksellers but for substantially more than the few shillings they sold for on publication.
Sir Joseph Paxton died in 1865. You can also find out more about Paxton and the Crystal Palace at our History of the Conservatory.
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