The Marine Garden of James Williamson
A time-worn old document was unfolded from a simple brown envelope, and here it is, creased, faint, and with faded colours - a genuine treasure.
It’s the plan of a Marine Cottage and a garden designed by James Williamson.
Plan of the Marine Cottage and Garden: courtesy of the Gilchrist family
In 1853, James bought Hall End House from the relatives of the recently deceased Anne Hinde, who had owned the house and lived there since 1829.
(Although it says Marine Cottage on the plan, it was known as Hall End House, and this will used in the rest of the article)
Hall End House and the Old Hall
The Old Hall (right) and Hall End House: Internet photo.
As seen in the photograph and the faded plan, Hall End House and the Old Hall are connected. Direct access from the Hall may have existed when it was first built during the 1700s, but entry was separate from the Hall after the early 1800s.
It is a handsome and deceptively large house.
In the Lancaster Gazette of May 1814, Hall End House was advertised as follows (extract, our bold letters):
Sea side – to be let for 6 months. A ready furnished cottage (plate and linen excepted) at Sunderland 7 miles from Lancaster. The house consists of two parlours, a store room, kitchen, scullery, pantry, cellar, and four bedrooms; with a garden behind the house well stocked with fruit trees and cropped. Sunderland is a remarkably healthy situation and peculiarly adapted for invalids as the water flows within a few yards of the houses. There is a bathing machine in the village and a carrier regularly on Wednesdays and Saturdays to and from Lancaster.
The Marine Garden Plan
The date on the plan is July 1853. The property was not yet his and was only finalised in December of that year. It’s easy to imagine James clearly knew what he wanted, and the map was drawn to his specific wishes.
James Williamson was an illustrious, energetic, influential, and (dare we say) the most interesting person to have lived at Sunderland Point. He was a highly skilled master craftsman and a painter of watercolours. His enterprise, ingenuity, and good fortune laid the foundations of Lancaster’s largest business. In his obituary in 1873, the Lancaster Gazette stated truthfully:
‘After a business career of about 30 years at the head of a firm which in extent of its operations stands at the head of all other manufacturing and trading establishments in the town’
The photograph
There is also a framed photograph. It is even more hazy and indistinct than the garden plan. It was taken from the shore, looking up at the Old Hall and Hall End House. Just to the left of the centre, a wheelbarrow can be spotted at the shore's top. Look behind the wheelbarrow, and there is the ghostly figure of a seated man in a tall top hat - believed to be James Williamson.
The photo believed to be of James Williamson: Courtesy of the Gilchrist family
The clinching evidence is on the rear side of the frame.
Label on the rear of the framed photo: courtesy Gilchrist family.
It’s a trade label used by James Williamson in the mid-1850s, suggesting the photograph was framed in his workshop on Church Street, Lancaster. (If true, this would make it the oldest SP photo seen so far.)
Here is a business advertisement from 1853, the same year he bought Hall End House.
Courtesy Guardian Newspapers
James Williamson is overshadowed by his son of the same name, who became, perhaps, the largest floorcloth covering manufacturer in the world. Nicknamed the Lino King, the son was MP for Lancaster, ennobled as Lord Ashton, and the supreme benefactor of Lancaster. The Town Hall in Dalton Square and the Williamson Memorial, fixed in the skyline, are the most well-known.
In 1895, within 20 years of his father’s death, the company wrote this boastful publicly:
The present undertaking constitutes the largest manufactory of its class in the world; and further, we may say, without any fear of contradiction, that the mammoth works on the banks of the Lune, at Lancaster, are the most extensive in the universe, that are owned and controlled solely by one individual.
At James Williamson’s funeral in January 1872, hundreds of their workers, local tradespeople, police officers, magistrates, and members of the Town Council joined the funeral cortege.
Shops were closed along Greaves Road, Penny Street, Brock Street and up East Road, and the blinds of private houses were drawn. The Gazette obituary:
‘Sorrow was seen on many a countenance amid the vast concourse which lined the streets, expressive of regret at the decease of one who had been such a generous benefactor to the town of his adoption’
Some details about his life and then back to the Marine Garden. Did he have an interest in gardens? Was he green-fingered?
James Williamson
James Williamson Mayoral portrait: courtesy Lancaster City Museums.
He was born in 1813, the son of a middling Keswick wool manufacturer. Having limited prospects but plenty of ambition, he left for Lancaster in 1827, aged 14, to begin a seven-year apprenticeship with Richard Hutton, an eminent painter and decorator. James then spent over two years in London, perfecting himself in ‘all the various branches of his profession’.
In early 1837, he entered a business partnership with Ellen, the widow of Joseph Shrigley, who urgently needed help to manage the family decorating business.
This was no ordinary painting and decorating. This was high-end. The order book reveals their specialities: the repair and repainting of shopfronts, the interior redecoration of public buildings such as the Assembly Rooms, decorative work on the new County Asylum, and the drawing rooms and libraries of wealthy Lancaster merchant families, such as the Hindes of Castle Hill
At the age of 24, on the strength of new financial security, he married Eleanor Miller, the youngest daughter of Leonard Miller, landlord and proprietor of the Blue Anchor Inn in Market Square. They had five children: four boys and a girl. Tragically, two of the boys died, one at just a year old and Leonard at the age of 21.
In 1844, the Williamson company was founded and (using ability gathered from his father’s woollen manufacture) he announced proudly ‘that after years of research’, he had developed a coated fabric table baize ‘that could stand wear as well as criticism’
(A heavy woollen-based fabric used to protect the table surface and help prevent the rattling of teacups!)
The company grew quickly. At the start of the 1850s, he employed only a dozen men. By December 1851, judging by the annual Christmas dinner he paid for, he had 50. A year later - it was dinner for 70.
In 1855, he built St. Georges Works, a new factory on the quay. Having survived the 1857 depression, in 1859, he organised a steamship trip for 121 of his men—including wives and sweethearts—from Morecambe to Fleetwood!
Through the 1860s, he extended the works on the quay, built Greenfield Mill on Moor Lane, and bought Bath Mill, originally constructed in 1837 for cotton spinning.
In the census of 1871, Williamson described himself as a ‘cotton table cover and varnish manufacturer employing over 800 hands.’ By 1879, the year of his death, this number had risen to more than 2,000 ‘hands’.
His employment practices were typical of the day: a 55-hour working week for skilled men, day workers engaged at the gate as required, stiff wage reductions when the order book fell, and taking to court those who left without serving full notice.
But he understood the difficulties faced by working people. He continued to pay wages to retired workers (provided they turned up each morning), made private donations to bereaved families, and was a regular attendee, making speeches at social events organised by the staff at his works.
Public Service
Rising to the most influential level of Lancaster society, he was elected town councillor for the Castle Ward from 1853 to 1865 and served as Mayor from 1864 to 1865. He was unanimously elected as chief magistrate in 1864 and selected as an Alderman the following year. In addition, he became one of the Overseers of the Poor in 1861.
The Ripley Hospital founded by Mrs Julia Ripley in memory of her husband, a wealthy merchant. Endowed to educate an equal number of girls and boys, it even had a heated swimming pool: Image, School website.
His energy extended to charitable work. James channelled funds to Ripley's Hospital, which opened in 1864 to educate the poorest children. He championed the Royal Albert Asylum (for children with learning problems), providing finance and organising a special committee for treatment available to ‘workingmen’s’ children. The Gazette June 1869:
(The Committee) which has been so successful and added the handsome sum of £123. 4sh. 11d. to the funds of the Royal Albert Asylum met at the Asylum Office on Monday evening last under the presidency of its chief originator and zealous promoter James Williamson Esq.
He also donated £500 to erect a new covered market and was a major donor to the new church, St. Paul’s, Scotforth.
After the opening ceremony in 1874, dignitaries retired to his home. The Gazette was on hand to post a story:
James Williamson Esq. entertained those who had attended the ceremony to lunch at his residence, where a bountiful and most sumptuous repast was provided. Nearly 30 persons were present, and all seemed highly delighted with the hospitality of Mr Williamson.
Parkfield, the final home of James Williamson, where he entertained the dignitaries who attended the opening of St Paul’s Church, Scotforth, in 1874: courtesy Lancaster City Museums
And Gardens?
Typical of municipal improvement of the time, both father and son supported public gardens. We were still hoping to find James (the father) had a special interest in gardening. In 1865, during his mayoral year, he personally sponsored this grand event.
Lancaster Gazette August 1865: Courtesy Guardian Newspapers
We also found an occasion when he donated various hot-house plants to a charitable exhibition, but these are not convincing of any special horticultural curiosity.
Nor is Williamson Park, the family’s best-known legacy, which is on a different scale altogether.
Williamson Park
Located on the old stone quarry site, which closed in the 1840s (and supported an earlier venture during the 1861-65 Cotton Famine), James worked on the park layout with designer John Maclean from 1873. His declining health slowed progress, and the park opened only after his death in 1881.
From the obituary in the Gazette, January 1879
‘This notice would be incomplete without a reference to one of the last public acts of Mr Williamson's life we refer to his munificent offer to the town council to extend £10,000 (almost £1 million today) for the purpose of providing a public park for the free use and enjoyment of the inhabitants of Lancaster.’
This is an understatement. It was a substantial measure of relief during the Great Depression. As the official City history confirms:
The forty-acre park was first laid out on the site of an old quarry by James Williamson to relieve hardship during this period of mass unemployment.
Diagram of the Park layout based on the plan in Sue Ashworth’s book on Lord Ashton, created by Paul Hatton
Back to Sunderland Point
With rising prosperity and social position, James attempted to sell the property in 1869. Now, with five bedrooms. From a slightly later advert in the Lancaster Gazette (edited):
TO BE SOLD BY PRIVATE TREATY with immediate possession. A MARINE COTTAGE. at Sunderland near Lancaster at the mouth of the River Lune; also 2 pews in the gallery of Overton Church. Mr Townley of Sunderland will shew the premises and for further information apply to Mr Charles Cleminson or Mr Williamson of Lancaster the owner. Lancaster 17th May 1861.
It was finally sold in 1872 in unusual circumstances. Here are the facts:
Among his many public offices, James was one of Lancaster’s Port Commissioners, as was Thomas Swainson, the long-serving Town Clerk. While sailing past the Point on an excursion with the Commissioners to Piel Island, the two men discussed a sale and agreed on a purchase price of £230 with a handshake. The sum was delivered to James Williamson’s office on Water Street by Thomas’s son, William, shortly thereafter.
Here is Hall End House from around 1900. On the right is Katharine (Kitty) Swainson, Thomas’s daughter who lived there. On the left is Alice Walker, mother of John Walker, the photographer. Two of Alice’s grandchildren can be seen appearing very bored.
Number 22, a John Walker photograph: Courtesy Lancaster City Museums.
The Marine Garden of James Williamson
The plan is a unique document related to one of the oldest and most elegant properties at the Point and linked to a man who rose to great riches while maintaining a sense of liberal paternalism. However, we should point out, as the Gazette obituary does:
In politics Mr Williamson was a liberal and though he entertained one or two ‘crotchets’ respecting women's rights he was not a man of extreme opinions.
Paul Hatton has spent many hours recreating the plan. As a result, we can now clearly see James’s Garden design and paths at the front and rear of his house. The vestiges of the front garden layout remain to this day.
It is even possible to check the arithmetic of the draughtsman!
A re-creation of the Marine Garden plan: Credit Paul Hatton
Special thanks to Paul Hatton for the brilliant diagrams of the Marine Garden and Williamson Park and to the Gilchrist family for allowing access to the original plan and the photograph of (probably) James Williamson.