Valentines Mansion is closed to public until further notice. We will let you know when Open Days resume. Meanwhile the park can still be enjoyed. Stay safe everyone and wishes for a happier New Year.
The daffodils are out, so it must be time to book for our March 18th event. This will be an online event, and it’s very easy to join in. Here is a taster of what will be covered during the evening. Please line up a drink and a piece of cake to enjoy during the evening, as March 18th is someone’s birthday! Whose will be revealed on the night!
The event will explain the history leading up to the parkland and mansion being bought by the council for the people of Ilford and chronicle some of the developments over the years that have created the Valentines Gardens and Park we all love and appreciate so much today!Meet members of the Redbridge Neighbourhood Team who can tell us about schemes across the borough to promote health and well-being through enjoying and helping improve our open spaces. The Garden City Redbridge in 1912, then called the Ilford Garden Suburb.
In 1910 a scheme was devised involving the creation of the Ilford Garden Suburb, whereby funds could be raised from the sale of new houses here to purchase parkland for Valentines Park. There was real concern at the “advance of bricks and mortar” at the time and that the rural nature of Ilford could be lost forever. Fortunately due to foresight and investment, Valentines was preserved! Since when it has developed beyond all imagination.
The Cranbrook Square Garden.
Now the Garden City Redbridge Residents Association have a scheme to raise money to improve this little pocket park situated a stones throw from the Bethell Avenue entrance gates to Valentines Park. If you would like to find out more, click here. After all this area was until 1910 part of the Valentines Estate!
Would you like to help? Please email GCRRA@outlook.com
Getting excited at the thought of a bug hotel in The Square!
Line up your questions for the Question and Answer session! Panelists include members of the Ilford Historical Society as well as the Redbridge Neighbourhood Team, residents from the Garden City Redbridge and Friends of Valentines Mansion.
Friends of Valentines Mansion are proud of our involvement in the restoration of the Mansion, Gardens and Park. We are currently writing up this part of our history for a new section on this website.
We thank all involved and look forward to seeing a good turnout on 18th March, members old and new! If you’re not yet a member of The Friends, you can join here.
Ice, snow and snowdrops are beginning to make way for more vibrant Spring colours and the promise of warmer weather. We know we have to wait patiently at least until April for the house to re-open, so in the meantime we can continue to enjoy the Historic Park and Gardens. But have we seen the end of the freeze?
Did you know though that not all snowdrops are white? They can be pale pink, blue, lavender, or white! Snowdrops are classified as Galanthus nivalis: gala is Greek for “milk,” while anthos is Greek for “flower” and nivalis is Latin for “snow-like.”
Snowdrops in the dell, near the park entrance where The Drive meets Cranbrook Road. This area is also known as The Wash.
Snowdrops are toxic to humans so, much as we enjoy their beauty, they make a suitable metaphor perhaps for us all looking forward to them fading, warmer weather arriving and life hopefully returning to more normal patterns for everyone.
Stay safe! Enjoy the Park and Gardens! We look forward to seeing you soon.
Our next members’ event, “From Tiny Acorns” will be held on 18th March 2021 on Zoom.
18th March was the birthday of the last owner of Valentines Mansion, Holcombe Ingleby. After his mother died in 1906, no-one in the Ingleby family wanted to return to live at Valentines and the house and estate was up for sale.
In 1912, the people of Ilford were invited to support the Council with a forward-thinking scheme which enabled an additional 20 acres of the Valentines estate to be bought to create the Valentines Park we know and love today, following the death of the mansion’s last resident, Sarah Ingleby. The Ilford Garden Suburb was created to help finance the purchase. This area is now known as the Garden City Redbridge and they have a newly formed Residents’ Association.
You can find out more about the Garden City Redbridge Residents Associationhere or on Twitter @GardenRedbridge
Early 20th century Valentines.
Join our Zoom call at 7.30 pm on 18th March to discover details of how this came about over 100 years ago, as well as hear from some of the people who today are entrusted with and involved in preserving and improving neighbourhoods throughout Redbridge for present and future generations.
At a time when parks and green spaces have a newfound importance, vital for exercise, relaxation and reflection, we know they are a powerful part of our recovery from the current crisis.
Featured during the 18th March event are extracts from a fascinating booklet written by a local doctor in 1911 from The Friends’ archive, called “The Future of Valentines Park”. It explains the creation of the Garden City Redbridge and how the building of these houses enabled Ilford Town Council to buy the land to enlarge and create the Valentines Park we know now.
Please join us! We all need friends!
If you would like to join The Friends, details are on the Support Us tab.
Hello to all our readers. We hope you are staying safe and for those who aren’t able to travel to Valentines at the moment, it seems a good idea to share some photos from this beautiful sunny autumn day, along with a few snippets and facts.
Valentines Mansion in the distance
The park was busy with walkers today. We miss being able to visit the mansion at the moment, but it’s good to know that the Gardener’s Cottage Café in the Historic Gardens is open every day, with a takeaway service.
Silver birch and golden reflections
Silver birch (Betula pendula): a few facts.
This common tree, with its silver-white bark, is considered by some as a symbol of purity.
In early Celtic mythology, the birch symbolised renewal and purification. Bundles of birch twigs were used to drive out the spirits of the old year, and gardeners still use the birch besom, or broom, to ‘purify’ their gardens.
It is also used as a symbol of love and fertility. In Scottish Highland folklore, a barren cow herded with a birch stick would become fertile, and a pregnant cow would bear a healthy calf.
Birch wood is tough and heavy, making it suitable for furniture production, handles and toys. It was once used to make hardwearing bobbins, spools and reels for the Lancashire cotton industry.
The bark is used for tanning leather.
Silver birch wood is of little commercial value in Britain because the trees don’t grow as large as they do in other parts of Europe.
In the Spring, the silver birch produces flowers as catkins. The trees are monoecious, with both male and female catkins on the same tree.
Facts courtesy of woodlandtrust.org.uk and kids.kiddle.co
The Boating Lake
Charles Welstead, owner of Valentines 1808-1838
Charles Welstead, one of the owners of Valentines Mansion, is credited with creating this large lake after he took ownership in 1808. During his tenure, Charles Welstead made substantial changes to his 170-acre estate, to comprise not only formal gardens, but a farm. There were stables to the north of the house. The fields nearest the house became used as meadows for cows, horses and sheep, and those on either side of the boating lake, were used as arable land.
When first married, Charles Welstead travelled from his home in Essex to the Custom House in the Port of London and Trinity House on Tower Hill to work, as others in his family did, collecting duties from the ships entering and leaving port.
1805 Trinity House, Tower Hill, engraved by Ambrose William Warren (1780-1856) from an original study by William Ellis.
Welstead was a wealthy, charitable and forward-thinking man, building a school in Barkingside soon after he came to Ilford.
He supported young recruits from the workhouse to equip them for service in the British Navy and we know from newspapers at the time that he acted as steward for the Royal Humane Society for the Recovery of Persons apparently Drowned or Dead.
In the 18th and early 19th century, few people would have been able to swim. It was not the popular sport it is today and it was not taught to children. Before the Society was founded, it would not be uncommon for over 100 people a year to have drowned in London alone. Many of them probably worked on the Thames or on one of London’s smaller rivers, canals or lakes.
The Society was founded in London by two doctors, who were concerned at the number of people believed drowned, wrongly taken for dead – and in some cases, buried alive. Both men wanted to promote the new, but controversial, medical technique of resuscitation and offered money to anyone rescuing someone from the brink of death.
The founder members of the Society felt sure that the public would support them in their aim of restoring ‘a father to the fatherless, a husband to the widow and a living child to the bosom of its mournful parents’.
They published information on how to save people from drowning; paid two guineas to anyone attempting a rescue in the Westminster area of London; double that amount: four guineas to anyone successfully bringing someone back to life; one guinea to anyone – often a pub-owner – allowing a body to be treated in his house; provide volunteer medical assistants with basic life-saving equipment.
One guinea was worth one pound and one shilling (£1.05) and would be equivalent to about £140 today.
The reward of 4 guineas paid to the rescuer and 1 guinea to anyone allowing a body to be treated on his premises soon gave rise to widespread scams: one would pretend to be rescued and the other the rescuer – and they would share the proceeds. So monetary rewards were gradually replaced by medals and certificates, with occasional “pecuniary payments” up to a maximum of one guinea.
The 1834 auction notice after Charles Welstead’s death gives us an image of his farm at Valentines: 10 milk cows, 9 calves, 7 cart-horses, a beautiful well-bred filly, 4 sows, 40 pigs, wagons, ploughs, farrows, hay carts and the like in addition to elegant furnishings in the house itself.
1834Autumn blossom today
Can anyone tell us what kind of tree this is? Contact us via the Contact Us tab.
We look forward to seeing all our Friends and followers in the Spring! We will let you know as soon as we can when the house will be reopening, though we know we have to be patient. Stay well and safe and please join The Friends if you aren’t already a member!
