William Bradbery: Difference between revisions

William Bradbery, ( British Watercress Pioneer ).

William Bradbery born 11th of July 1776, died 11th of August 1860, an entrepreneur, who was the first person in England to cultivate & sell watercress on a commercial basis.

William was born in Didcot in Berkshire ( now Oxfordshire ), he was one of seven children to Thomas & Catherine Bradbery. In 1796 he married Phoebe Whiting in Marcham, Berkshire ( again now Oxfordshire ).Until around 1805 he stayed in the Marcham area, then they moved to Springhead, Northfleet in Kent. This is where William first started to cultivate watercress.

In an article by Mr Henry Bellenden Ker,Esq.F.R.S.&c in 1822, to the London Horticultural Society. He states, "I lately found that watercress is grown in this neighbourhood, by Mr William Bradbery,for the purpose of supplying the London markets. Mr Bradbery first began to cultivate the watercress in February 1808, at Northfleet Spring Head, Nr Gravesend. For this purpose, he procured young plants, & placed them, with a small proportion of the wet earth in which they grew, in shallow running water; the plants soon formed large tufts, & rapidly spread over the water; & he then gathered the cress regularly for the London markets".

"Mr Bradbery now having left Northfleet last year (1820),began to plant, at a considerable personal expense, beds of the cress, at West Hyde, near Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire. Mr Bradbery has about five acres of lakes planted with cress. He sends the cress in hampers, each containing eight dozen bunches, to the London markets, every day throughout the year, except Sundays; three days in each week to Covent-Garden market, & the other three days to Newgate market. This cultivation of the watercress has insured a constant & regular supply to the metropolis: & the gatherings are received much fresher, & more regularly packed, than those obtained from plants in the wild state; where little selection is made as to the quality, or attention paid to the state of the vegetable, which is usually sent up to town in sacks, & often much bruised & broken before it reaches the retail dealer".

West Hyde proved to be an ideal place to grow the cress, as water bubbled to the surface in a line of springs. The water containing suitable minerals which assisted the growth of the cress. By the mid 1900's, William Bradbery was sending cress to many cities throughout the country, being, Manchester, Liverpool, York, London, Oxford even up to Edinburgh. In the 1841 census return, William described himself as a "Market Gardener", employing 22 workers from West Hyde & area. He even sent cress to the Great Exhibition of 1851, at the Crystal Palace.

Now residing in some style, he & his wife lived at Corner Hall, in West Hyde, the family home for over 75 years. Having created a substantial business for himself & his family, William retired in his sixty's, & let his sonJob take over the running of the business, who in turn passed it onto his son, Richard.

William died on the 11th of August 1860, a little over a month before his wife Phoebe, who died on the 19th of September 1860. They are buried together, & have a well preserved & substantial headstone in the churchyard of St Thomas's, in West Hyde.

The watercress business continued in the ownership of the Bradberys for some years after William died. Richard the grandson (a bachelor all his life),seemed to lack the same entrepreneurial spirit & drive of his grandfather William. So in 1927, after over a century of cress production, the watercress beds were sold to another local grower, thus ending the Bradbery Dynasty in West Hyde.

In 1960, the Three Rivers District Council, marked the achievements of William & his family, by naming one of the roads in nearby Maple Cross "Bradbery". This was a similar theme as in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, ('not four miles away) where they named a street "Bradbery Gardens", where William's eldest son Richard, also ran a watercress farm, to complement the one in West Hyde.