The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient TurnpikeHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Dover Road (England); England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
There a curious kind of rusticity was tempered with an equally curious
urban flavour; there the succulent shrimp and the modest watercress ("Tea
ninepence; srimps and watercreases, one shilling"), were supplemented
romantically by the strains of husky bands. There art was represented by
broken-nosed plaster statues of Ceres and a variety of other heathen
goddesses, some supporting gas-lamps in sawdusty bars and restaurants;
others gracing lawns and flower-beds. To those who delighted in plaster
statues grown decrepit and minus a leg or an arm, like so many neo-classic
Chelsea pensioners, Rosherville was ideal.
"Where to spend a happy day," as the advertisements used to
invite--"Rosherville." The watercress consumed there, and at the other
popular places near by, came from Springhead, which will be found in the
country at the back of Gravesend. In 1907 died the last surviving daughter
of the man who "invented" watercress as an article of food. It was about
1815 that William Bradbery, of Springhead, began to cultivate from a green
weed that grew in the ditches this favourite addition to tea-tables.
He cultivated with care, and laid out extensive beds, then, when he had a
marketable crop, sold it locally. It soon became a famous table dainty,
and nothing would satisfy him but the patronage of London. He filled an
old tea-chest with cress, and, with this on his back, trudged off to the
metropolis, a score or more miles away. The sample was satisfactory, and
he quickly developed a London trade.
Bradbery (it is said) when he was building up his London connection, paid
a vocalist to go at night from one place of entertainment to another,
singing a song in praise of the famous brown cress from the waters of
Springhead.
Be that as it may, Bradbery made a fortune by cultivating his cress on the
extended area. He seized an opportunity where another man would not have
seen one.
Watercress is now cultivated largely, and in numerous districts. It is
known, botanically, as _nasturtium officinale_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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