Jennifer Ayto

 

 

The Rothamsted Year

This is based on Sir John’s Weather Diary and moves from winter ploughing through spring (“shorn my Flocck of Sheepe“), the apple blossom (“made a vessell of 10 gallons of Cider“) to high summer and harvest.  It takes in the formal garden (“the peaches, Roman nectarines” and the “fairest quinces“), the “dove howse” and his “Emenyes” (Anemones?).

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir John Bennet Lawes, founder of the Rothamsted Experimental Station and acknowledges its importance in the development of horticulture with the rotation of crops (in this case fallow, roots, cereal and legumes) and the use of lime.

The New River

Sir Hugh Myddleton’s brother married into the Wittewronge family and so the connection with this family archive is tenuous but his achievement, in creating a clean water supply for the City of London 401 years ago, was remarkable. This illustrates the journey of the New River from New Gauge, through leafy Hertfordshire, the suburbs and into the metropolis.