The Gardeners’ House has received a treasure trove of new archive materials – with the gift of a collection of William Watson’s belongings, the last head gardener to live in the Gardener’s House in Morrab Gardens.
Now the team is in our beautiful newly renovated building, our collections manager Emily is getting to work on sorting our existing collection – but she also has plans to grow our living archive.
We have had great support throughout the project from Sue Griffin, who is the granddaughter of William Charles Daniel Watson, the last head gardener to live in the Gardener’s House in Morrab Gardens. We have been very fortunate to learn more from Sue about her grandfather, his time in Morrab Gardens, and his life.
talking to Taryn Nixon from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Gardeners’ House Director, Miki Ashton
As well as being a conscientious and skilled gardener, William was a founding member of the Gorsedh Kernow in 1928, taking the bardic name Tyrvab (also spelled Tirvab or Tyrvap) meaning ‘Son of the Soil’.
Watson became interested in Kernewek – the Cornish language – while working in the garden of a vicarage at the age of 14. He was asked by the reverend to return a book to someone in the neighbouring village and decided to read it along the way. He was later known for having the ‘most perfect dialect voice’ when speaking Cornish.
Sue has kindly gifted us some wonderful archive material relating to her grandfather, which show us more about his action during both WWI and WWII, and about his activities relating to the Gorsedh and Old Cornwall Societies.
to Sue Griffin and in recognition of her brother Roger who contributed his time and his memories to our project
These will become a wonderful resource for various avenues of research – ones that relate to Watson himself, the early Gorsedh, Cornish language, Cornwall during wartime, and many other possibilities!
We would like to say meur ras (thank you) to Sue for her time and generosity. We also want to recognise the support of Sue’s brother, Roger Watson. He sadly passed away recently but he was kind enough to share some of his memories of William with us.
We hope to do some more research around this fascinating man, who left school at 13 years old, became part of the Cornish language revival movement, spoke several languages and was a highly respected, dedicated and skilled gardener.
If you would like to talk to us about donating archive materials about our community in West Cornwall or the landscape around us, we’d be really happy to hear more from you.