WOULD you believe that this picture is set in the walled garden behind Townsend House? Mind you, this is as it was in 1913.

   Compare the idyllic scene with the images of the garden today on these pages - and on the Nantwich Walled Garden Society website too, of course. 

   Unless styles of gardeners' clothing has changed greatly, the picture must have been especially posed - for the residents of Townsend House, maybe. Note the dog lying between the couple.   

   Nantwich historian Andrew Lamberton got in touch with me when I was Web Editor of the NWGS website at a time when I was seeking pictures of the garden in its heyday.

  This one had been used in "Lost Buildings Around Nantwich" by Andrew and his co-writer, the late Robin Gray, in an appendix for their first book, "Lost Buildings in Nantwich".

   It is understood these books are no longer in print but they sometimes appear on-line for large sums of money.

  The caption to this picture in the book reads: "A photograph taken around 1913 showing Walter and Caroline Davies outside the bungalow in the garden behind Townsend House, Welsh Row, Nantwich."

   The rooftops behind the bungalow are houses in King's Lane. (See the section of the garden as it is now here).

     Mr Davies was a gardener and grew vegetables in

the walled garden. All that is left of his hard work now is a rusted metal framework (left) and a jungle of trees and plants.

   People seeing the current scene believe the metalwork is the remains of a greenhouse that stood on the garden site when it was a nursery.

    Andrew Lamberton said: "I obtained the

1913 picture through Jill and Caroline Pace of the village shop at Worleston, opposite the Royal Oak.

   "Mr and Mrs Davies were the parents of their mother.

    "I looked in the 1911 Census and was surprised to find that A.O.Bevan, the Nantwich solicitor, was living in Townsend House then.

   "He was there until the 1960s when he died.

   "There is no reference to the bungalow in the garden so it must have been put there just after 1911."