Chelmsford & District National Trust Supporter Group

Report by Shirley Deering

On the evening of 14th February members enjoyed another “home grown” presentation, this time given by Members Thelma Wilson and Olive Baldwin. Well-known for their breath-taking handicraft skills, on this occasion the two members demonstrated another skill as they gave an illustrated talk on Ellen Willmott and Warley Place.

Thelma led the first half of the evening, with a talk on the life of Ellen Willmott. A famous lady gardener, she is often spoken of in the same category as Gertrude Jekyll, but the two are not really comparable, Gertrude being more of a writer while Ellen’s focus was on developing new plant species.

Ellen was of humble origin, her grandfather had kept a chemist’s shop, a business taken over by her father. He made shrewd investments and became a wealthy man and was able to buy the large property, Warley Place where Ellen, the eldest of three daughters, grew up. Born in 1858, by 1905 Ellen had inherited a considerable fortune from her parents and this, combined with legacies from other relatives and friends, made her a very wealthy woman. She bought other properties, including one in Italy, and both she and Warley Place had become famous in the world of gardening. At Warley Place Ellen grew many different kinds of plants, for instance, she had an alpine garden, and had many very expensive ways of developing them. She had heated greenhouses, with their own boiler house, heated frames and irrigation channels. Popular legend said she employed a hundred gardeners to help her, probably not true, but she may well have had up to fifty. Sadly, Ellen had no head for figures and, by the time of her sudden death in 1934, was in great financial difficulty.

Olive then took over the second half of the evening, to tell us what happened to Warley Place and the gardens. Sadly, the house did not survive, but plans by a property developer to purchase the land were not accepted and WWII put a stop to such ideas. After the war Warley Place found itself in a green belt area, therefore safe from being built on, but in a woeful state of dereliction. In 1970 Essex Wildlife Trust obtained a 99 year lease of the grounds and today it is a thriving centre of nature conservation, run by many volunteers and welcoming many visitors. Surely Ellen Willmott would approve!