I was in the garden of a friend in Honeydon Road, admiring the blushing fruit of one of her pear trees. She told me that that this is a Williams pear tree named after her great grandfather William Camp who was a nurseryman for the renowned Rivers Nursery in Sawbridgeworth. The tree was in the garden when she and her husband moved into their home many years ago. When her late father visited he immediately saw the tree and told her “that pear variety is named after your great grandfather.” How delightful.
For more about the Rivers Nursery see below
The Rivers Nursery of Sawbridgeworth
The name Thomas Rivers immediately brings to mind the great Victorian nurseryman of Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire, although in fact he was the third Thomas Rivers. His grandfather had founded the business in 1725; he took up the reins in the probably 1837 and steered it to national and international renown by the time of his death in 1877. This was a period of enormous opportunity for nurserymen with a vast increase in demand for all kinds of plants, fostered by a revolution in glass house technology as large panes of cheap glass became available and glass houses went up by the mile, while the railway network transformed the movement of goods and people and the birth of the gardening press opened up avenues of communication and advertisement. Rivers forged ahead raising many new fruit varieties that remained stalwarts of our gardens and markets up to recent time: Czar plum, for example, Early Rivers cherry and his peaches and nectarines were planted from California to South Africa. |
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