Our October talk was given by Lesley Cunneen on ‘The History of the Plantation Garden’ which is situated just off Earlham Road. It was originally created by Henry Trevor. He was not a local man and came to Norwich from Wisbech to work in the early years of the nineteenth century. He was apprenticed to Mr J Gray, and resulting from his apprenticeship he became a prosperous upholsterer and cabinet maker.
Mr Gray had three daughters. The oldest was the widow of William Page, a book seller on Gentleman’s Walk. She and Henry Trevor eventually married. Both families were active members of the Baptist Church and Henry maintained a chapel in Pottergate for sometime.
In 1855 Henry bought the lease of an old quarry adjacent to the (now demolished) prison at the junction of Unthank Road and Earlham Road. A condition of the lease as that he had to build a house by the spring of 1857 spending not less than £2000, which was a considerable sum at that time. The quality of the building work was high and was completed in 1856. The lease was for 75 years at a ground rent of £66 per annum.
On completion of the house he began creating the garden, and over the next 40 years Henry Trevor spent a considerable amount of money an effort transforming a chalk quarry into a beautiful garden. He built an unusual Gothic fountain, terraces with balustrades, rock-works, a Palm House and a rustic bridge. He also planted elaborate flower carpet beds, woodlands and shrubberies, and laid paths for visitors to walk along circular routes. The garden was regularly open for charitable causes, an unusual thing for middle class people to do. Between times the well remembered furniture store of Trevor Page limited came into being.
During the period 1884-1910 the Catholic Cathedral was built on the site of the former prison next to the garden.
From 1919 to 1929 George Green (an ex Lord Mayor) lived in the house. Then it became a nursing home until being virtually abandoned after WWII, and in more recent times it has been used as a hotel. Fortunately much of the garden structure survived and was taken over by Plantation Garden Trust, founded in 1980, when a mammoth task of restoration work began. .
The gardens are now separately maintained by the volunteers of the Trust, their efforts gradually removing years of unmanaged vegetation to reveal the original beauty of the place. The garden is now a popular Grade 2 English Heritage listed site.
John Clarke