A Surprise From the Archives

The Fry family still own Bridge End Garden and occasionally send the Friends old photographs and documents for our archive.  Always welcome, these all add to our knowledge of the Garden and the Gibson family.  When a bundle of letters and documents arrived, all quite delicate, we thought they should be made available online so others could see them. 

We applied for a grant from the Essex Heritage Trust to have the documents digitised by Essex Record Office (ERO) and they kindly agreed to fund the copying.  205 pages of documents were scanned and they will be available on the Essex Record Office website.  In the future they will also be electronically available at the Gibson Library in Saffron Walden.  Eventually the originals will be placed in the Gibson Library.  A big thank you is due to the Essex Heritage Trust who have helped make this happen.

Over two hundred pages were scanned by the ERO and to illustrate this news item, a page was picked at random because it has reasonably legible writing (above).   On reading through it however we had a lovely surprise.  It is a letter from Edward Pease (yes the Father of the Railways) dated 1840 to his granddaughter Bessie Gibson in which he wrote about his son-in-law, Francis Gibson:

….I hope the time is not very far distant when himself, thy precious mama, dear Franky, [probably Frank, Francis’ son] thou and I may have to rejoice together in seeing him point out to us all the new beauties his skill, designed, and which his hands have executed in your farm garden; I daresay there is many a bright device introduced into it, calculated to please and that he has not kept to the old fashioned rule which governed in the days of good Queen Bess

When each alley had a brother –

And one half’s garden reflected another.

This is important as it is another confirmation that Bessie’s father, Francis Gibson, designed Bridge End Garden.  Written documentary evidence is always helpful in building up the story of a historic garden.

The second document (above) is the postal address for Edward’s letter to Bessie.  It is not addressed to Bessie but to her father, Francis Gibson, with a little note – For Eliza Pease Gibson. Clearly fathers monitored their 14-year-old daughters’ correspondence in 1840!

The back of the envelope (pictured above) has a seal with a stork which was the Gibson family emblem.  Quakers have a star as their emblem but are not known for many others. Traditionally stork symbolism represents new beginnings, fertility, birth, good luck, happiness, renewal and parental devotion. We do not know why the Gibson’s chose the stork as their emblem but it also represents spiritual or personal transformation and the journey of faith which would fit with their Quaker philosophy. 

The Essex Heritage Trust was launched in 1990 and its mission is ‘to help safeguard or preserve for the benefit of the public such land, buildings, objects, or records that may be illustrative of, or significant to, the history of the County or which enhance an understanding of the characteristics and traditions of the County’. Our project met their criteria perfectly.

Grants range from £100 to £10,000; projects must be within Essex and for the benefit of the public.  The main project categories they fund are buildings, structures, monuments and maritime projects; church contents; historic and listed buildings; museums; works of art- purchase and restoration; publications, historical research and archaeology and landscape & gardens.

The Trust is a charity that welcomes donations and has a Friends Membership Scheme.  If you would like to know more, go to www.essexheritagetrust.co.uk.