(This is the first of a four-part series of articles I wrote under this title for 'Hertfordshire Countryside,' and these were published over the January - April 2004 issues. This is Part 1)

Who was James Pulham?

James Pulham and Son were one of the foremost firms of landscape gardeners of the 19^th and early-20^th centuries, who specialised in the construction of picturesque rock gardens and ferneries, and also manufactured a wide range of award-winning garden furniture, such as vases, urns, sundials and fountains etc.  Their clients included the aristocracy and leading industrialists of the day, and they were awarded royal warrants for their work at Sandringham and Buckingham Palace.

They worked all over the British Isles, but their special interest to our readers here is that they were based in Station Road, Broxbourne, between the 1840s and the time they finally went out of business at the beginning of the 1939-45 war.   We know of a number of examples of their work that still survive today in remarkably good condition - and some in not-so-good condition - and there may well be more of which we are still not aware, due to the fact that their records were all destroyed when they went out of business.

Luckily, however, the second James Pulham - there were four generations, all called James! - published a promotional booklet entitled 'Picturesque Ferneries and Rock Garden Scenery' c1877, in which he included an appendix listing all his 'satisfied clients' to that date.   We therefore have a complete list of their rock garden and fernery projects up to that point, so any gaps in our list are likely to relate to work done after this.

Wherever possible or practicable, Pulhams used to use locally-quarried natural rock in their gardens, but, if this was not available, they literally made their own by building rough rock shapes out of heaps of old bricks or rubble, and coating it with cement, coloured to match the appropriate stone.   Their skill and craftsmanship lay in their unique ability to sculpt the surface cement with brushes, combs, and other implements or materials to make it look like the genuine article, and many a famous geologist was fooled by their achievements.   This proprietary cement soon became known as Pulhamite.

My interest in this firm stems from the fact that no fewer than five of my direct ancestors - including my grandfather, Frederick Hitching, and my great-grandfather William - all worked for Pulhams as 'rock builders.'   We always knew that my grandfather did this, because we often watched him building 'rocks' in his garden when we were young, and he loved to tell us stories of how he worked at places like Buckingham Palace, London Zoo, and so on.

We also knew that two of his brothers did the same thing, but I only found out about his father and uncle when I started to research our family tree.   I decided to visit the Lowewood Museum, in Hoddesdon and Broxbourne, and ask the curator, Neil Robbins, for any further information he might have.   That is when I learned that there were no surviving company records, and Neil invited me to conduct some 'much needed research into this most important and interesting local firm,' with a view to producing a book about them.   It has so far been a fascinating project, although the book is still a short distance down the road.

Our terms of reference here, however, are to produce a brief survey of the work they did in their home county of Hertfordshire, so, since any subject of this nature is best approached chronologically, let's start at the beginning.

James Pulham (1) - 1788-1838

James (1) was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, in 1788, and was the eldest of ten children in a very poor family. James and his younger brother Obadiah were apprenticed to John Lockwood, the major builder of the town at that time, and both showed a remarkable talent for stone modelling.   In fact, they were so gifted in this respect that James was promoted as a foreman by the time he was thirty.

John Lockwood's nephew, William, took over the firm when John retired, and he was particularly interested in the current fashion for ornamental stonework.   He invented his own 'Portland Stone Cement' to use for this purpose, because he found its natural stone colour to be far preferable to the brown Roman cement that had invariably been used hitherto.

William Lockwood expanded his business to London in 1824, and took James (1) and Obadiah with him to supervise the modelling work.   William eventually tired of the travelling backwards and forwards between Woodbridge and London, however, and decided to retire to Woodbridge, leaving the Pulham brothers in London, where they continued the business on their own.

Benington Lordship

The one big project for which James (1) and Obadiah are known is the building of a large Norman-style folly at Benington Lordship, near Stevenage, for which the designer was probably Thomas Smith, an eminent architect and the County Surveyor of both Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

Fig 1.1 shows the façade of the Lordship - or Manor House - and, if you walk through the archway into the courtyard beyond, you will see that the mock 'ruins' are even more extensive than they first appear.   There is a mock 'dining hall' along the side of the house, and then, beyond the hedge to the left, there is a short pathway that leads to the summerhouse, shown here as Fig 1.2. It looks like a genuine ornate, Norman-style entrance, but walk along to the right-hand corner, and look round to the side . . .

Fig 1.1 - The Folly at Benington Lordship (1835-38)    (Photo from 'Picturesque Ferneries and Rock Garden Scenery' by James Pulham c.1877)

Fig 1.2 - Norman-style Summerhouse at Benington Lordship

Sure enough, the stonework continues round the corner - but only for a couple of feet or so, as you can see from Fig 1.3! Beyond that, all you have is a small brick-and-tile out-building!   The inset shows how the cement cladding was applied to the base brickwork in order to create the fake effect.

Fig 1.3 - Side of Summerhouse

Fig 1.4 - The front of Woodlands c1840, with its conservatory and Fountain   (Photo reproduced by kind permission of the Lowewood Museum, Hoddesdon)

James Pulham (2) - 1820-1898

James (1) died suddenly in 1838, not long after the completion of his work at Benington Lordship, and James (2) - who was only eighteen years old at the time - took over the business, working for some years with his uncle, Obadiah.   He moved up to Hoddesdon in 1842, where they had a number of influential contacts.

One of these was John Warner, for whom James (2) landscaped a large garden in the grounds of his house, 'Woodlands.'   The major features of these gardens were the lakes, cascades and fountains amid clusters of both natural and artificial rocks.   This garden no longer exists, but we can get some idea of what it looked like from Fig 1.4, which shows the front of the house, with its greenhouse, and fountain in the foreground.   This picture is reproduced by kind permission of Lowewood Museum.

Their next 'garden assignment' was for William Baker, at Bayfordbury, near Hertford, where they built a rock garden near the house, and a rose garden near the stables, but, like the gardens at 'Woodlands,' nothing of these remain, apart from the fountain and restored circular pool in what used to be the rose garden.   They later returned to build a grotto and further rockwork in the pinetum on the estate, but hardly anything remains of this, either, although gallant efforts are being made to restore this to something approaching its original glory.

Church Building and Restoration

Fig 1.5 - St Thomas' Church, West Hyde (1843-44)

As far as the firm's order book was concerned, however, these garden landscaping assignments were somewhat diversionary, because their reputation had hitherto been based on their stone-masonry skills - so valuable in the building and restoration of churches etc.   Someone who would have been tremendously helpful to them in this respect was Thomas Smith, who they met through their association at Benington Lordship.   Smith was commissioned to design and build a number of churches, both in England and in Europe, and two such projects were St Thomas' Church at West Hyde in 1843-44, and the Ware Cemetary Chapel in 1854.

Smith contracted James (2) to build both of these churches, and they each show traces of the Pulhams' personality.   The immaculate stone casting around the porch, and the meticulously knapped flint around the lower section of the external walls of the church at West Hyde - shown in Fig 1.5 - are expertly executed, and the atmosphere inside is idyllically calm and peaceful. But there is also something else.   Cast your eyes upwards, and you will notice a carefully modelled stone cherub on the end of each of the main supporting hammer beams - Fig 1.6.

Fig 1.6 - The interior of St Thomas' Church, West Hyde

The Cemetary Chapel at Ware was built ten years later, in 1854, and is in the shape of a 'T,' with a small chapel in each of the two arms, at right angles to each other.   Smaller in scale, but quite similar in style to St Thomas' Church at West Hyde, this chapel has one unique feature - the Pulham name is embossed at the foot of a pair of columns outside one of the doors.   The chapel as it stands today can be seen in Fig 1.7a, and the (dirty) embossed columns in Fig 1.7b.

The ravages of time have rendered this structure unsafe for religious use today, but it is still used by the Council for the storage of gardening tools and equipment.   We were very keen to have a peep inside the chapels, however, because, having seen the stone cherubs at West Hyde, we were curious to see if there was anything similar inside here.   Sure enough, we found a set of stone angels at the head of the hammer beams - one of which is shown in Fig 1.7c.

a) Outside, as it is today

b) Pulham's name embossed on a porch pillar

c) A stone angel

Fig 1.7 - Ware Cemetary Chapel (1854)

Pulhams were also involved in other church building and restoration work outside Hertfordshire, including some magnificent restoration on the North Porch of the church of St Mary Redcliffe, in Bristol, but that is beyond our remit here.   Suffice to say that Obadiah Pulham did not appear to agree with his nephew, James (2)'s plans to expand his operations into garden landscaping.   He was obviously a very religious man, and left to work as Thomas Smith's Clerk of Works in a number of major church-building projects in Europe.

But that's another story. In our next section, we shall look at the Pulham manufactory in Broxbourne, and at some of the magnificent products that were made there. In the meantime, if you would like to know more about the firm of James Pulham and Son - both within and without the confines of our county boundary - why not check out the Pulham internet website at www.pulham.org.uk?   Alternatively, if you have any comments or questions about these articles, contact Claude Hitching direct at 11 Asquith House, Guessens Road, Welwyn Garden City, Herts, AL8 6QA, or telephone 01707 323391. There may well be a possibility that you know of a previously unrecorded Pulham site, in which case I shall be particularly interested to hear from you.