The nursery is in St. Ann’s Place, Milman Street, Chelsea, and the old wells in it were once in Sir Thomas More’s garden.
Mrs. Chamberlain takes one or two young ladies from time to time, as apprentices or improvers to learn jobbing gardening, florist’s work, or both if desired. Terms for improvers who have already had some training, 10s. per week to start with. The terms for a course, £30. The ladies find their own board and lodging. After three months, Mrs. Chamberlain pays them 2s. 6d. per week, and after six months 5s. per week. For the last quarter of their training, ladies receive 7s. 6d. per week. Sometimes ladies are taken for four months, upon payment by them of £10 10s.
Should it prove desirable, they can, at the end of this time, pay a further sum and remain a year. Pupils are expected to be ready to do anything required, and are not allowed to pick and choose their work.
The following extracts from the report of the
WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL CLUB
will serve to show the scope of its object and work. The club has as its premises the Manor House, Bredon’s Norton, near Tewkesbury, Worcestershire.
There are few more beautiful spots in rural England than the little village of Bredon’s Norton in Worcestershire, nestling as it does at the base of the lofty Bredon Hill and overlooking the fertile valley of the Severn. The club-house stands on a gentle eminence, and from its broad terraces may be viewed some of the most lovely scenery in England. Abruptly behind it rises the Bredon Beacon Hill, of which a great poet wrote:
“Twelve lovely counties saw the blaze
From Bredon’s lonely height.”
The hill is crowned by the remains of a Roman encampment, thrown up, it is said, during the wars of the Romans against Boadicea, the Queen of the Iceni.