Scientist of the Day - Charles Edmund Isham

The manor house of Lamport Hall, with Charles Isham’s rockery at right center, recent photograph (discover-northamptonshire.co.uk)

Charles Edmund Isham, an English gardener and landowner, was born Dec. 16, 1819, at the family estate at Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire. The Ishams were a long string of baronets who had owned an estate and manor house near Northampton since Tudor times.  Charles Isham was the 10th baronet.  Around 1847, he began constructing a rock garden, which he called a “rockery”, just behind the manor house, inspired, it is said, by John Claudius Loudon, a garden landscaper who invented the term “arboretum” for a garden of trees, and must also have touted the attractions of rock gardens. It is further related that Isham put every single stone of his rockery into place himself. We show here recent photos of the rockery and the house, and the rockery itself (first and third images).  It had lots of small grottos and crevices, which resembled miniature mines.

Portrait of Chales Edmund Isham, oil on canvas, by Henry William Pickersgill, undated, Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire (artuk.org)

Isham visited Nuremberg sometime aound 1847 and found that the mines there were decorated with small terracotta gnomes, who wielded tiny picks and shovels.  Isham came home with several dozen of these, and used them to populate his rockery.  Some of them worked in the mines and grottos of the rockery; some of them, it seems, were on strike for better working conditions for gnomes (fourth image).

The rockery at Lamport  Hall, Northamptonshire, built by Charles Edmund Isham over the course of 50 years, recent photograph, with no gnomes in evidence (warwickshiregardenstrust.org.uk)

All of this would be utterly trivial, were it not for the curious fact that Isham’s gnomes were the first documented garden gnomes in the English-speaking world.  Evey garden gnome in the United States and Great Britain – and there must be millions – can trace its heritage back to the terracotta gnomes of Isham’s rockery at Lamport Hall.

Three gnomes in the rockery at Lamport Hall, photograph, Gardeners' Chronicle, Sep. 25, 1897, p. 211 (archive.org)

Of the original population of gnomes in Northampton, only one survives.  It is said (everything about Isham and his gnomes seems to be based on hearsay) that Isham’s daughters hated the gnomes and systematically removed them after his death in 1903, except for one hidden in a grotto.  The sole survivor of that gnome purge, nicknamed “Lampy,” is now on guarded display at Lamport Hall, which is open to the public (fifth image). It is said that Lampy is the oldest surviving garden gnome in the world.  I find that hard to believe, one would think there would be older specimens in Germany, where they originated. There is investigative work to be done, on the gnome front.

The last surviving gnome from the original set in the rockery at Lamport Hall, purchased by Charles Edmund Isham in Nuremberg in 1847, now on display in Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire (artuk.og)

I have never been anywhere near Northampton, so I have never seen Lampy or the rockery.  If anyone has been there, or plans to go there in the near future, please take photos and send me some.  Lamport Hall is about 80 miles NNW of London.  I am sure they have souvenir gnome replicas for sale; I wouldn’t mind one of those either, if we could work out the logistics. Perhaps I should just look on eBay.

Charles Edmund Isham, age 79, at the gates of Lamport Hall, photograph, 1898 (Wikimedia commons)

I have heard that the Isham family no longer owns Lamport Hall; I do not know who currently has ownership, perhaps the National Trust.  You cannot take lightly the responsibility for preserving and displaying the world’s oldest garden gnome, to say nothing of Isham’s marvelous rockery, which I really would like to see in person.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.