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The first monument next to the Chapel is a reminder that Fulham was once known as “the garden of London”. Up until the late 19th century the area where the Cemetery now sits was known as ‘Fulham Fields’ and the land offered by the Archbishop of London to the Parish for its cemetery in 1864 was, at the time, a field of lettuces.
Farmer gardeners would grow garden crops, grain and fruit for the ever-growing population of the city. Fulham was so synonymous with gardening that varieties were given the prefix ‘Fulham’, including the “Fulham cabbage” which was extensively grown for the London markets and resembled the French large ox-headed cabbage¹.
The Elliott family vault is located at the corner of Section 5, next to the chapel. The inscription reads, "The family vault of William Elliot, Esq."
Chapel with Elliott grave in the foreground – arguably the cemetery's no.1 plot.
The Ordnance Survey map of London in 1897 is the last map to show Munster Road Nursery, owned by the Elliott family, which closed in 1898.
John Elliott, his brother, son and grandsons were nurserymen and market gardeners who founded the Munster Road Nursery.
John Elliott, his brother, son and grandsons were nurserymen and market gardeners who founded the Munster Road Nursery.
William Elliott m. Susan Spackman (1789-1872)
1807-1882John Elliott m. Amelia Spackman (1804-1880)
1814-1891John Elliott m. Fanny Louisa Billins (1843-1921)
1845–1905John Joseph Elliott m. Amelia Appleford (1863-1902)
1865–1908William George Elliott m. Caroline Mary Silcock (1869-1917)
1868–1900
Harriet Holland (née Elliott) (1804-1880)
Martha Elliott (1810-1882)
Eliza Elliott (1820-1905)
The Elliotts and Fulham’s Market Gardens
The Elliotts and Fulham’s Market Gardens
The Elliott brothers, who are interred in one of the grandest tombs in the cemetery, were market-gardeners. Originating from Colchester, Essex, William (1807-1882) and John (1814-1891) were the sons of a gardener and had married two sisters, Susan (1789-1872) and Amelia Spackman (1804-1880). At some point between the 1830s and ’40s they sought their fortune in London. By 1861 William and John were listed on the census as living on Dancer’s Lane in the Parish of All Saints. William is recorded as owning three acres of land, employing seven men and John also had three acres of land, employing eight men. They had a domestic servant and next to their property are a couple of cottages, known as “Elliott’s cottages” occupied by a labourer and a basket maker.
Ten years later both William and John had moved to Munster Road, living in “Cambridge Villa” and “Nursery Villa” and were employing between them 22 men, two women and two boys. Their nursery, which was called the Munster Road Nursery, spanned over ten acres which lay between Munster Road and the Fulham Cemetery. It’s highly likely that they provided the land for Cemetery's eastward expansion to Munster Road in 1874, but we are yet to evidence this.
On the death of John Elliott in 1891 his son, John, took over the business. He died in 1905 but his two sons, William George and John Joseph were running it when its stock-in-trade was sold up in August 1898. The family had been market gardeners for at least three generations. The Sale Catalogues shows that there were thirteen greenhouses on the ground and the stock included geraniums and three hundred and two plants in pots ².
In his book, Fulham: Old and New (1900), Fèret describes how “In 1821 the market gardens and nurseries of Fulham numbered nearly fifty, in 1853 they had decreased to twenty, while now [1900] only seven or eight survive” ³. Twelve years later this entire area was built up, as shown in the 1912 Ordnance Survey map of London, with the new streets Bronsart Road, Mablethorpe Road, and Rowallan Road created where the Munster Road Nursery stood.
The sarcophagus also commemorates the lives of other Elliott siblings as well as children, grandchildren and their spouses, all of whom are listed above.
Sources
Sources
Vilmorin-Andrieux. The Vegetable Garden. English ed., originally published ca. 1885 as Le Potager Vilmorin. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1920. Read online at soilandhealth.org ↗️
E. J. Willson. West London Nursery Gardens. The Fulham and Hammersmith Historical Society, 1982
Charles James Fèret, Fulham: Old and New (1900, London). Read online at the Wellcome Collection ↗️
See also
See also
Findagrave: John Elliott Sr. (Which has more photos of the grave)
Research contributed by Rebecca Thomas. Photo by Francois Jordaan.
View the graves map to see the location of all the graves. Photo album: Graves and memorials
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