Ridge Way House, Mill Hill

Peter Collinson inherited this house from his father in law in 1749 and created his garden on the surrounding hill, ten miles from his office in the city of London. Purchased in 1807 by a group of non-conformist benefactors, it became the first Protestant Dissenters School known then and now as Mill Hill School. Ridge Way House was demolished as the school grew in size to be replaced by the rather grand building designed by Sir William Tite which exists today.

Hortus Collinsonianus

Peter Collinson kept copious notes of his plant collection but a formal catalogue of his garden was not produced until 1843 by Lewis Weston Dillwyn FRS (1778 – 1855) whose father, William was a Pennsylvanian Quaker and vigorous anti slavery campaigner. Dillwyn was born in London but moved to Wales where he established the production of Swansea Pottery. He was also known for his published works on natural history.

London Bridge

Peter Collinson’s city office in Gracechurch Street was a short walk from the north bank of old London Bridge, a structure much modified and repaired since its completion in 1209. The narrow highway and high volume of traffic had made it an unbearably busy point of entry to the city of London by Collinson’s time and the dangerous currents between the narrowly spaced old starlings made river passage into a life threatening event.

It was replaced in 1831 by a new bridge, built by John Rennie some 30m upstream and this, in turn was replaced by the current structure in 1973. An old pupil of Mill Hill School, Ivan Luckin, was responsible for the sale of Rennie’s bridge for reassembly in Lake Havassu City, Arizona. The blocks of stone were carefully numbered and transported to America, all except one which is displayed still at Mill Hill School.

Pool of London

Peter Collinson would wait anxiously for the arrival of the vessels on which his international trade (and exchange of plants!) depended, going down to these dockside quays so congested, it was said, that one could walk across the river simply stepping from ship to ship. In the mid eighteenth century this short stretch of river from Rotherhithe to London Bridge handled more than 2000 ships.

West India Dock

In 1799, a new dock with it’s own entrance and security was built to accommodate the exploding trade with the West Indies, still known as the West India Dock.

Regents Canal Dock

Ships bearing coal for the new industries accounted for two thirds of the congestion in the pool of London. This was greatly relieved by the building of the Regents Canal Dock which gave access to a new canal network.

William Hogarth (1697 -1764)

William Hogarth was three years younger than Peter Collinson and lived and worked in the same London Streets. He knew better than many the underside of city life; his father was imprisoned in Newgate for five years and many of his sketches, like this one entitled ‘Gin Lane’ illustrate the sheer unpleasantness of it. Best known in his day for his very fine, formal portraiture, his sketches from the streets reflected a serious intent for social reform.

He was a very active supporter of charitable works and served with Peter Collinson, Hans Sloane and others on the first governing body of the Foundling Hospital established by Thomas Coram in 1739.

Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine

Peter Collinson lived in the ‘Age of Enlightenment’, an age of science and invention. Thomas Newcomen (1664 – 1729), a Baptist lay preacher from Dartmouth was, by day, a skilled ironmonger and brilliant inventor. This engraving shows the first piston and cylinder steam engine he developed in 1712 which came into common use in tin and coal mines in the 1720s. Fuelled by coal, it was housed in specially constructed buildings outside the mine entrances, powering pumps at various levels to extract water and lessen the extreme danger of flooding. James Watt (1736 – 1819), like Collinson, a Fellow of the Royal Society worked to develop improved versions of this mechanism producing the Watt engine in 1774.

Handel (1685-1759)

When this picture was painted in 1733, Handel was 48 years old and one of the most eminent London residents. He settled in Brook St. Mayfair in 1712 as Kapellmeister to King George I and achieved widespread popularity five years later for his celebrated composition of the ‘water music’, which he first performed for the king and his guests as they floated in extravagant procession down the Thames. Another notable royal contract, for George II, resulted in his ‘music for the Royal Fireworks’, attended by 12000 people in London’s Green Park in 1749, celebrating the end of the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748). He devoted much of his energies to good causes in his latter years. In 1750 the Messiah was performed as the first of a series of annual charity events benefitting the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury and raising money for musicians in need.

George II (1683 -1760)

Whether or not, the 31-year old Peter Collinson was able to catch the strains of Handel’s ‘Zadock the Priest’ coming from the coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey in October 1727, he could not but be caught up in the celebrations. He was, but for a few years, a contemporary of the new king, living through a period characterised by tension and warfare, driven at home by the catholic Jacobite Rebellion and abroad by competition with France and Spain for control of the American Colonies. The Jacobites’ aim was to restore James VII of Scotland and II of England who had been deposed in 1688 by his protestant daughter, Mary and son-in-law, William of Orange in the ‘Glorious Revolution’. These hopes were dashed finally by the Battle of Culloden in 1746 leaving scars, however, which remain to the present.

Colonial wars

Peter Collinson exported linen and cotton fabrics to North America against a background of sustained aggression between the three colonising powers of Britain, France and Spain. Ships carrying goods from Europe followed the southerly trade wind route to the Caribbean, tracing the Eastern Seaboard northwards and returning with cargoes of tobacco, furs, indigo, sugar and lumber with the aid of the more northerly gulf stream. The normal hazards of ocean and wind, combined with the perils of enemy attack made safe passage and secure trade a matter of chance and good seamanship. The French defeat with the capture of Montreal in 1760 ended the so called ‘French and Indian War’ (the 7 years’ war). Though the terms were less than satisfactory for the hawkish leader of parliament, William Pitt (1708 – 78), the cessation of hostilities would have come as a relief to traders like Collinson, not to mention the one and a half million British settlers. It also brought glory and fame to a young Major called George Washington who served gallantly throughout.

Philadelphia

This sketch of the Philadelphia waterfront on the Delaware river was made in the late 1700s It was here that that Peter Collinson’s brother gardener, John Bartram would wait anxiously for the safe arrival of personal goods and botanical specimens from his friend and here that he would load, in return, the crates which carried the precious plant materials to London.

Plant transporter

It was in crates like this, that Collinson’s specimens arrived. Precious though they were to him, they had to take their chances at sea being regarded with little curiosity and some irritation by the sailors as they cluttered important deck space. It is easy to imagine that they were amongst the first casualties in heavy seas.

John Bartram (1699 – 1777)

That this self-effacing Philadelphia farmer with no formal education came to be appointed ‘King’s Botanist to North America’ by George III in 1765 is extraordinary and resulting largely from his friendship with Peter Collinson. A ‘brother of the spade’, fellow Quaker and insatiable plant collector, his regular shipments from North America came to adorn the gardens of the great English country houses and the botanical parks of Kew, Oxford and Edinburgh.

Bartram’s House in Philadelphia

Modern Philadelphia bears little resemblance to Bartram’s city but his fame is not restricted to visitors to this house and garden. He is remembered in public spaces and, most notably, in the naming of the John Bartram High School.

Collinsonia canadiensis

This plant arrived in one of Bartram’s boxes and was named to honour Peter Collinson. Like many of the plants collected by Bartram it has medicinal qualities which were known to the native Americans. It improves circulation and is used in the treatment of haemorrhoids.

Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)

No one personifies the term ‘Age of Enlightenment’ more than Benjamin Franklin. Rejecting the life of a Puritan priest, he left his Boston home at 17 for Philadelphia, arrived in London virtually penniless a year later in the first of many Cross-Atlantic adventures. America and the world is indebted to him for his services to science, literature and political philosophy. Not without justification he is known as ‘The First American’. As a friend of John Bartram, he quickly made the acquaintance in London of Peter Collinson. Collinson generously sponsored Franklin’s electrical experiments, facilitated connections with the London scientific community and became his lifelong friend and mentor. Correspondence between them shows how highly Franklin valued Collinson’s advice and guidance on matters both scientific and political.

Franklin’s return to America 1785 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

Benjamin Franklin served as Ambassador to France from 1776-85. This painting, now in the Smithsonian Institute, celebrates his return to take up a congressional role second only in status to President George Washington. During these last five years of his life he devoted much time and energy to the anti-slavery movement.

Joseph Banks FRS (1743 – 1820)

Joseph Banks was a wealthy young land owner from Lincolnshire, well connected and able to enjoy the very finest things in life. From his early years he had a passion for natural history, spending time at the Chelsea Physic Garden and the newly established British Museum. It was at the museum that he met a protégé of Peter Collinson, Daniel Solander who had been appointed curator. Banks paid for his new friend to accompany him on the historic voyage to the Southern Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, a trip which brought them both much success in later years. Banks is remembered for his exploration and his collection of plant, animal and geological specimens, also for Kew Gardens where he was King George’s principal adviser, a life-style legacy taken up by Charles Darwin fifty years later.

Endeavour off the coast of New Holland by Samuel Atkins 1794

In August 1768, Peter Collinson died and HMS Endeavour sailed out of Plymouth harbour, Captained by James Cook on a voyage of scientific discovery. Its mission was to track the transit of Venus in Tahiti (1769) and to chart the unknown lands of the Southern Ocean. Due to the unparalleled excellence of Cook’s navigation, both were accomplished and Australia and New Zealand became new British Territories.

Cedrus Libani – plaque and tree

In 2009 the Mill Hill Preservation Society, as part of their celebrations of the 60th Anniversary of their founding in 1949, agreed with the then Headmaster Dr Dominic Luckett of the Mill Hill School Foundation, that a Cedrus Libani tree could be planted in the area known to the school as the Peter Collinson Garden. The tree replaced the one destroyed in a storm that raged in recent years, and was believed to have been planted originally in 1737 at Ridgeway House when his father lived there.

The tree planting was commemorated by a plaque the words of which say… “In commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Mill Hill Preservation Society. This tree replaces a cedar, the bole of which is nearby, traditionally held to be that planted during a visit to the botanist Peter Collinson by Carl Linnaeus, inventor of the binomial system of plant nomenclature. 24th April 2010.

Website co-author John Living

John Living, an architect and Chair of the Mill Hill Preservation Society is seen here labelling trees in the grounds of the Mill Hill School Foundation estate in London NW7. This was done in 2012 as part of the work for the Peter Collinson Heritage Garden project (2011-13) that failed to materialise due to various complications with funding and access of visitors to the school grounds. Many of the trees were either directly planted by Collinson or were sons and daughters of his specimens.

Because of the failure of the Heritage Garden Project the idea was formed by the Committee of the Mill Hill Preservation Society to build a web site dedicated to Peter Collinson – our most famous local botanist. John Living and Trevor Chilton took on the task. Funds were obtained from MHPS members and Adam Collis of Baobab IT Services was appointed. Much of the work on this website was put together at the time of the school project entitled ‘Seeds across the Seas’.

Website co-author Trevor Chilton

Trevor Chilton has long cherished the heritage of Peter Collinson having taught at Mill Hill School and lived on the site for over 30 years. He has mapped and labelled the trees remaining from Peter Collinson’s garden and planted many more, selected to match the original collection and ensure continuity. Trevor was a member of the ‘Seeds across the Seas’ committee, and has also been a member of the Mill Hill Preservation Society for many years.

The trees were labelled with a system developed for Kew Gardens and was meant to be part of a labelled walk through the grounds – the walk never transpired but the labelling is still there. Trevor’s love of the trees can be appreciated by reading his article on the ‘The Remaining Peter Collinson Trees at Mill Hill’ under the plants section of this website.

John Bartram garden in Pennsylvania

Bartram’s Garden is a 45-acre National Historic Landmark, operated by the John Bartram Association in cooperation with Philadelphia Parks and Recreation. The John Bartram Association’s mission is to protect and enhance the landmark Bartram’s Garden and House; advance the Bartram legacy of discovery, gardening, and art; and inspire audiences of all ages to care for the natural world. The garden is situated on the banks of the Schuylkill River – and our image is taken from the garden, over the river with the city of Philadelphia in the distance.

The main link to the work of John Bartram in the UK is Painshill Park and various references and articles can be found on this site to the work they have done including the collection of North American trees and shrubs that formed the basis of the John Bartram Heritage Collection, which was awarded national collection status by Plant Heritage in May 2006.

Hydrangea 1746 sign Mill Hill School

The Mill Hill School Foundation acknowledges the importance of Peter Collinson in the history of English Botany. There is a ‘Collinson House’ for boarders, the area where Ridgeway House used to stand is called the ‘Collinson Garden’, portraits of him hang in the school buildings, and a series of lectures is occasionally run called the ‘Collinson Lectures’. The spot where the first Hydrangea flowered in the open in this country in 1746 is marked with a small plaque. Currently there are plans afoot to celebrate his work with a bed planted with his original introductions and Painshill is involved with this project.

The book by Raymond Taylor “Plants Of Colonial Days” (ISBN 0-486-29404-8) states the following…
"Hydrangea – Hydrangea arborescens:
This shrub was introduced into England from Virginia in 1736: Collinson wrote in 1746: “My Hydrangea, perhaps the first in England, flowered in my garden in Mill Hill."

Parson Street, London NW4 – Borough of Barnet

The Cedar of Lebanon growing proudly on this busy street, one of the a few remaining Collinson plantings, pre-dates the house by about 200 years. It is a lone survivor of an original line of cedars stretching from St. Mary’s Church Hendon to the top of Highwood Hill, Mill Hill along with what would have been the main road in the 18th century. Of the three cedars in St. Mary’s Church yard, only two now remain. The image below is of the tree that fell in 2013.

Peter Collinson Gate & blue plaque

The existing wrought iron gate is believed to be the original gate that gave access to the rear of Ridgeway House where Peter Collinson lived. The gate is in the garden wall of the Mill Hill School Foundation grounds fronting onto The Ridgeway. The house is also marked with a blue plaque that reads… ‘Site of Ridgeway House residence of Peter Collinson (1694-1768) Author, Naturalist and Botanist’.

Peter Collinson house and garden – map from 1796

This reference is included as it is the only plan we have managed to find that shows Ridgeway House and the extent of the Peter Collinson garden in Mill Hill. The orientation of beds or trees on a north-south alignment is clear as is his pond in the bottom right hand corner to the south. The plot marked 157 is where we believe he had a greenhouse. The triangular area to the right of his house labelled The Clock House is where Peter Collinson would have taken the horse-drawn carriage to his office in the City of London – about 10 miles away.

Queens Diamond Jubilee Tree Oct 2012 – plaque and tree

The Mill Hill Preservation Society made a planting to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and took the opportunity to plant an Acer X Freemanii which is a 20th Cultivar derived from trees introduced into England in the 18th century by Peter Collinson F.R.S. The planting was in the Mill Field where the windmill that gives Mill Hill its name was known to have been sited.

School garden May 2005

This view of top terrace in winter shows the Mill Hill building, designed by Sir William Tite in 1827, on the site of Peter Collinson’s garden. Many of the trees remaining are from the original garden and can be read about in the plants section of this website. The school website reads as follows…

“HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL
The village of Mill Hill is situated on a mile long ridge over 400 feet above sea level. Mill Hill School is situated on The Ridgeway, an ancient trackway used and adapted during the past 2000 years by various settlers including the Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans. The Mill Hill School Foundation occupies a 120-acre site, part of which formed the gardens of Ridgeway House, the house of botanist Peter Collinson. Collinson was one of the most important importers of rare and exotic plants into English gardens. Many of the species that he introduced to Mill Hill in the 18th Century continue to flourish today in the grounds of the School and do much to provide the unique and beautiful setting the School enjoys.”