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BCD Special Report Historic Gardens 2010 5
to the fine quality of the work. The portico, a
pedimented Venetian arch, was built in 1761
but the stone pineapple roof is thought to
have been added later between 1761 and 1776.
Although Philip Miller and John
Abercrombie extolled the virtues of tanners’
bark while lamenting the flaws of manure,
many structures that used dung as a heating
method were devised into the mid 19th
century. Adam Taylor wrote a tract A Treatise
on the Ananas or Pine-apple in 1769 in which the
use of horse manure was promoted, probably
for the first time, as a method of heating a
‘Smooth Cayenne’ pineapples fruiting in their clay pots at
the Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall
‘Charlotte Rothschild’ pineapple illustrated in J Wright’s
The Fruit Grower’s Guide Vol V
Sadly, of the 52 varieties listed by Monro
in 1835, only two remain in cultivation
today, ‘Smooth Cayenne’ and ‘Jamaica
Queen’. These are thought to be the two
major strains from which most cultivars
originated. From the 1950s onwards,
pineapples were bred so they fitted neatly
into a tin. Fruits with a characteristically
pyramidal shape such as ‘Black Prince’ became
extinct. Fortunately, however, some traces
of Britain’s long and sometimes eccentric
love affair with the pineapple remain.
Two working pineapple glasshouses can
be seen in Britain today: the 19th century
pineapple pit at the Lost Gardens of Heligan,
mentioned above, and the pinery-vinery
at Tatton Park, which is a recently restored
structure dating from the mid 18th century.
Recommended Reading
J Abercrombie, The Complete Forcing Gardener,
Lockyer Davies, London, 1781
DP Bartholomew et al (eds), The
Pineapple: Botany, Production and Uses ,
CAB International, Oxon, 2003
F Beauman, The Pineapple: King of Fruits,
Chatto & Windus, London, 2005
S Campbell, Charleston Kedding:
A History of Kitchen Gardening,
Ebury Press, London, 1996
JL Collins, The Pineapple: Botany, Cultivation and
Utilization, Leonard Hill Ltd, London, 1960
G Coppens et al, ‘Germplasm Resources
of Pineapple’, J Janick (ed),
Horticultural Reviews, Vol 21, 1997
J Hix, The Glasshouse, Phaidon
Press Ltd, London, 1996
J Lausen-Higgins and P Lusby ‘Pineapple-
growing: Its Historical Development
and the Cultivation of the Victorian
Pineapple Pit at the Lost Gardens of
Heligan, Cornwall’, Sibbaldia, No 6, 2008
JC Loudon, An Encyclopedia of Gardening ,
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown
& Green, London, 1827
P Miller, Gardener’s Dictionary, 7th
edition, J Rivington, London, 1759
P Minay, ‘James Justice (1698–1763):
18th-century Scots Horticulturalist
and Botanist – I’, Garden
History, Vol 1, No 2, 1973
WA Speechly, A Treatise on the Culture of
the Pineapple and the Management of the
Hot-house, A Ward, London, 1779
M Woods and A Warren, Glass Houses:
A History of Greenhouses, Orangeries and
Conservatories, Aurum Press, London, 1990
J Wright, The Fruit Grower’s Guide, JS
Virtue & Co Ltd, London, 1892
Johanna Lausen-Higgins came to the UK
in 1999 to work at the Lost Gardens of Heligan
where she tended the glasshouses, pineapple
pit and outdoor fruit trees and plants. She
completed a BSc (Hons) at the Royal Botanic
Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) last year, is currently
studying for an MA in Garden History at the
University of Bristol and is an occasional lecturer
at RBGE. She would like to thank Jeremy Milln,
a National Trust archaeologist, for supplying
information about the pinery-vinery at Tatton
Park. Emailjlausenhiggins@gmail.com.
pineapple pit. The difference here is the use of
pits compared to hothouses; pits require less
heat to warm the air around the pineapples.
Crucially, however, the pots were still plunged
into tanners’ bark to provide bottom heat near
the plants, with the added bonus of a slightly
better odour. The dung was confined to two
outer bays flanking the structure, and the
fermenting manure released heat, which was
conveyed into the structure through pigeon
holes. These glasshouses were effectively large
cold-frames and this moderate version of a
pineapple hothouse meant smaller estates
could afford to serve a pineapple at the dinner
table. (Pineapples could be hired for dinner
parties but cost a guinea each, two if eaten.)
A restored 19th century manure-heated
pineapple pit can be seen in action, complete
with steaming dung pits and fruiting pines, at
the Lost Gardens of Heligan near St Austell
in Cornwall. Unfortunately, tanners’ bark
can no longer be obtained, making it even
more difficult to achieve a healthy crop
without the aid of artificial heating. Despite
this, large crops were achieved in 1997 and
2002, the latter without the help of tanners’
bark. The first fruit was sent to the Queen,
thereby honouring the tradition initiated
by Matthew Decker over 250 years ago.
The 19th century
Three developments of the Victorian period
changed pineapple cultivation radically:
the inventions of hot water heating in 1816
and sheet glass in 1833, and the abolition
of the glass tax in 1845. From then on
glasshouses for pineapple cultivation
became very large and grand structures,
with up to 1,000 plants packed into them.
Pineapple cultivation had, by
this time, spread widely in Northern
Europe to places such as St Petersburg,
Paris, Warsaw, Berlin and Munich.
One of the most successful pineapple
growers was Joseph Paxton, head gardener
to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth
between 1826 and 1858. His pineapples
were the envy of every estate and regularly
won medals at horticultural shows. The
pineapple houses at Chatsworth were erected
in 1738, but had declined somewhat before
Paxton took over. Now quantity as well as
size became important, and gardeners were
expected to produce fruit all year round; this
required a good knowledge of the best winter
and summer-fruiting cultivars. If records
can be believed, Victorian gardeners grew
pineapples of enormous sizes. Cultivation
of the pineapple was now the measure of a
gardener’s skill and a pinery was mandatory
for every estate kitchen garden, and
remained so for almost another century.
1900 to the present day
Pineapples were still exhibited at horticultural
shows in the 1900s but, ironically, just as
pineapple cultivation was being perfected,
the demand for the home-grown pineapple
began to dwindle as imported fruits started
to arrive in much better condition than in
the past. The first world war eventually put
a stop to this horticultural extravaganza.