Horticulturalists

27

Single

The Flower Farm, Upper Station Road, Henfield, West Sussex

NUWSS

Complies

May Martin Le Lacheur (1884-1944) was a daughter of Congregationalist merchant banker John Allen Le Lacheur of The Wilderness, Tunbridge Wells. Gladys Sherris (1885-1939), recorded as staying at The Wilderness from 1907, was the elder daughter of a Royal Navy paymaster. By 1908 Dorothy de Jersey Le Lacheur, one of May’s sisters, was holding local WSPU meetings at The Wilderness. Dorothy and May, with their elder brother and Gladys, took part in the WSPU demonstration in Hyde Park on the 21st of June 1908, driving to London in a motor car decorated with rosettes in green, white, and purple. Later in 1908, Dorothy set up a Tunbridge Wells branch of the Women’s Freedom League (WFL) running this as secretary. Her mother became treasurer of the Tunbridge Wells branch of the NUWSS. Meetings of both societies were held at The Wilderness. In the spring of 1909, as ‘M Martin, The Wilderness, Tunbridge Wells’, May placed a small ad in the WSPU’s Votes for Women newspaper: ‘Lady gardener seeks situation in private or market garden; full training; certificates and practical experience’. Nothing appears to have come of this, and a year later she and Gladys had established the Flower Farm in Upper Station Road, Henfield, and were advertising in Votes for Women, ‘boxes of choice cut flowers’ and ‘strong transplanted seedlings.’ As a commercial enterprise, the Flower Farm never rivalled the merchandise and marketing developed by (see) the Misses Allen-Brown at the Violet Nurseries nearby. As women of means, May and Gladys could afford to concentrate instead on winning professional prestige by entering their produce in top-class competitions. In July 1910, their success at the annual Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural International Union Show at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Regent’s Park, was reported in, significantly, the NUWSS paper The Common Cause: ‘Misses May M Le Lacheur and Gladys Sherris, FRHS, who within the last 12 months have established a nursery garden at Henfield, were awarded the silver Knightian medal for English hothouse melons, and a first prize for giant sweet peas and a second prize for roses.’ In 1911, as confirmation of a shift from militant to non-militant, May and Gladys complied with the Census, signing it as ‘Suffragists and nursery gardeners’ (see image). In 1912, they joined other Henfield women, notably (see) Elizabeth Robins and the Misses Allen-Brown, in contributing to a fund to help the Pethick-Lawrences, following the couple’s ejection from the WSPU. One likes to picture this group of women gathered together on the 14th of May 1913, when (see) Florence de Fonblanque and her Marchers Qui Vive, who were staying overnight in Henfield on their way from Horsham to Brighton, held a meeting in the village at 7pm. Two months later May and Gladys again triumphed at the Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural International Union Show, winning first prize for their ‘striking collection of herbaceous plants’ and were named among the ‘chief prize-takers who showed that lady gardeners are able to hold their own against male competitors’. May and Gladys left Henfield during the War, Gladys to take up ambulance work at the Front until her marriage in 1917.Sources: Kent and Sussex Courier, Votes for Women, Common Cause, Cheltenham Examiner 17 July 1913, Westminster Gazette 11 July 1913, The National Archives. Contributed by independent researcher & writer Frances Stenlake.