Horticulturists

44 & 55

Single

Holmgarth, The Common, Henfield, West Sussex

WSPU

Evades

Decima Allen (1869-1951) and Ada Brown (1856-1915) lived in Holmgarth, Henfield from about 1899. The house was owned by a relative of Ada Brown by marriage. By 1906 they were marketing the products of the Violet Farm they established there, referring to themselves as Misses Allen-Brown FRHS. They began by advertising boxes of freshly cut violets in the Morning Post in March 1906; in the autumn the magazines The Gentlewoman and The Queen promoted their soap, bath salts, perfume, and protective ‘motor lotion’. A year later their business was publicised as being world-famous and scented ‘novelties’ were proposed as Christmas gifts. From April 1908, when Votes for Women progressed from a monthly to weekly publication, Misses D and A. Allen-Brown are listed as contributors to WSPU funds. From August 1908, each week’s issue of the paper carried advertisements for their ‘preparations’. In September, a page headed ‘Progress of Women’ included an announcement of the founding of a French Horticultural School by ‘those two excellent friends of the WSPU, Misses Allen-Brown’. Training was to be conducted on up-to-date scientific principles and based on fashionable French methods. The two-year course would lead to a diploma, and endeavours would be made to place students in good positions in France or England. Misses Allen-Brown, by now major employers of women in Henfield, helped arrange a women’s suffrage meeting held on 11 July 1910 in the village Assembly Rooms. NUWSS organiser Barbara Duncan reported in their newspaper the Common Cause that she and Florence Basden, chair of the Brighton and Hove Women’s Franchise Society, ‘went to Henfield where Miss Mack (aka feminist playwright Margaret Macnamara) and the ladies of the Violet Nurseries had gathered a delightful audience’. Reverend CC Pridgeon, Vicar of nearby Steyning, was in the chair, with (see) Elizabeth Robins in support. It was as WSPU members, however, that Misses Allen-Brown refused to sign the 1911 Census: the Holmgarth page lists only the cook, housekeeper, and a housemaid. The Votes for Women newspaper reported the first WSPU meeting to take place in Henfield: on 27 November 1911. It was chaired by Elizabeth Robins and addressed by Isabel Seymour, a WSPU administrator, and ‘The platform was decorated by the ladies of the Violet Nurseries.’ In 1912 Henfield suffragists followed Elizabeth Robins in supporting Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence when the couple were prosecuted for conspiracy in the WSPU’s campaign of violent destruction, even though they did not participate in this themselves. When the Government tried to recover some of the costs of window-smashing by auctioning the contents of the Pethick-Lawrence house in Dorking on 31 Oct 1912, much of its contents was purchased by friends and returned. The Misses Ada-Brown were among the women of the village who contributed to a collection made by Ada Baxter, wife of the Captain of the Henfield Fire Brigade, towards this purchase fund. Misses Allen-Brown oversaw the planting of the flower beds at Backsettown, a record of which was kept by Elizabeth Robins at the back of her Visitors Book. In 1913 they published The Violet Book, dedicated to ‘Our neighbour, Miss Elizabeth Robins’. Sources: Votes for Women, Common Cause, Brighton Gazette, The Gentlewoman, The Queen, Bystander, Tatler, with thanks to Alan Barwick, Henfield Museum. Contributed by independent researcher & writer France Stenlake.