20-04-2025
The grumpy but famous city gardener who grew a wall to keep people out
NEVER mind Alan Titchmarsh or Monty Don or even, for those with very long memories, Percy Thrower who often seemed to dig in a tank top and tie.
When it comes to characters of the gardening world few could hold a candle, or even a shovel, to Worcester's John Williams.
And, despite the fact we already seem to have had summer in a topsy-turvy 2025, Easter is here and with it the traditional start of the gardening year.
So let's revisit the legend of the man from St John's who was described, appropriately and even by his friends, as 'a bonfire of hostilities'.
In other words he could be cantankerous and didn't like most of his fellow human beings.
As a proud full-bloodied Tory of the 18th-century school, Williams was violently opposed to any shift in the social order and was convinced the Reform Bill of 1832, which allowed many more people to vote, would lead to a reign of terror similar to that in Paris in 1793 when thousands died.
To prepare for the onslaught he set workmen to build a high grey stone wall frontage to the striking property he had built in Malvern Road, St John's, in the early 1800s called Pitmaston House.
The aim was to keep the newly-enfranchised hoi polloi at bay and, while this imposing barrier might appear a touch extreme today, Williams was not alone in his concerns.
All over Worcester there were others who feared a French Revolution-style uprising and had heavy shutters and similar defences fitted to their homes, behind which they lay in a state of anxious preparation for the radical mobs that never came.
However, Williams' wall did have one bright side.
The impressive edifice proved a lively topic of conversation between coachmen on the Worcester to Malvern run and their box-seat passengers: 'Over there you will see a wall built by a man who doesn't think you should be allowed to vote!'
Williams, who was the oldest of eight children, inherited the family distillery in Tybridge Street.
He probably moved into Pitmaston House in 1804 and lived there for the rest of his life, dying at the age of 80 in 1853.
For all his ultra-conservative views on society he was a paradox because John Williams was one of the most free-thinking and experimental horticulturalists of the 19th century.
His advanced methods led to new varieties of fruit, many of which are still standard today, and he is perhaps best remembered for his William and Pitmaston Duchess pears.
He contributed to the Royal Horticultural Society's journal on grapes, mulberries, peaches, nectarines and melons as well as the more common fruit.
At a dinner of the Highland Agricultural Society, Williams was acclaimed as 'the man who gave to mankind the Bruce potato!'
Although the tower and the icehouse of the Strawberry Hill Gothic-style Pitmaston House were destroyed in around 1945, the walls of the fruit garden were intact until well into the 1950s, still supporting many of Williams' award-winning trees.
According to one account, after 1947 the gardens were used for instruction by Christopher Whitehead Boys' School when apparently the remaining peaches and nectarines 'proved as irresistible as that apple in the Garden of Eden'.
But that's lads for you. Temptation wins every time.
Unless you were John Williams, the grumpy old gardener.
