Hackney Women

In Search of Jane Loddiges’ Great, Great, Great Grand-daughter

Have you ever wondered about the significance of the two exotic palm trees outside Hackney’s Town Hall on Mare Street?

Or have you walked along, or crossed, Loddiges Road, just off Mare Street, without knowing that it was named after a certain ‘Conrad Loddiges’ who built an enormous plant and flower nursery here in Hackney?

Thanks to David Solman, author of the extraordinarily detailed historical book ‘Loddiges of Hackney, the largest hothouse in the world’ (published by the Hackney Society[1] in 1995), we now know so much more about the importance of Hackney’s incredible horticultural history.

Horticultural Hackney

Hackney was once a rural idyll – fields, sheep, cows – as some of its place names attest: – London Fields, Sheep Lane, Ram Place – and Londoners would take the air, as the famous diarist, Samuel Pepys, did:

‘Mrs. Pen carried us to two gardens at Hackny, (which I every day grow more and more in love with,) Mr. Drake’s one, where the garden is good, and house and the prospect admirable; the other my Lord Brooke’s, where the gardens are much better.’

25 June 1666 [the ‘Great Fire of London happened just over two months later]

There was once a Samuel Pepys pub at 298 Mare Street. It was demolished in 2001 as part of the Hackney Empire development. Today, there is a bar called ‘The Two Palms’, perhaps as a nod to the Loddiges?

Solman’s revelatory book has been so popular that the Hackney Society has decided to publish a second edition, but with a difference. The aim is to shine more of a light on the women who played an important part in Hackney’s horticultural history, not least in the exquisite painting of some of the plants and flowers that were available at Loddiges Nursery.

I went along to the Natural History Museum with local artist, Marcia Teusink, and we were delighted to find some of Jane Loddige’s original flower paintings.

Today, with the help of Hackney Citizen’s readers, we’re hoping to find one of Jane’s distant relatives who, back in 2006, wrote an article for the Hackney Society about her link to the famous Loddiges family, indeed to Jane Loddiges herself.

So, what we know

Joachim Conrad Loddiges (1738–1826) was a German-born nurseryman who was passionate about plants and flowers. In the 1770s, he set up a plant nursery here in Hackney and began to introduce hundreds of palms, ferns, and orchids to the country. It’s thought that Loddiges was the first British company to cultivate orchids commercially. 

The Loddiges family lived on Mare Street, and the plant nursery eventually stretched over many acres, including the site of the present Town Hall, and nearby Urswick School on Paragon Road.

The largest hothouse in the world

Conrad’s son, George (1786–1846), introduced revolutionary hothouses that were steam-heated and featured a pioneering system of artificial rain and sprinklers to recreate a tropical atmosphere to enable their exotic plants to thrive.

From 1817, George also introduced a regular magazine – The Botanical Cabinet – featuring detailed information about the rare plants and flowers on offer at the nursery, including cultivation tips, all accompanied by beautiful hand-coloured plates. The magazine ran until 1833 and would eventually fill 20 volumes, with over 2,000 coloured plates (131 of which are orchids) that can be visited, for free, at the Guildhall Library[2].

Unfortunately, Hackney’s popularity back then (much like today) meant higher land prices, increased rents, and more pollution, which forced the nursery’s closure between 1852 and 1854.

Before Kew Gardens, there was Loddiges

Many of the nursery’s valuable plants were transferred to Kew (where  George’s ‘hothouse’ system had been adopted for Kew’s own Palm House, albeit installed 30 years after George’s, in 1848). 

In 1854, there was more than a little excitement in Hackney when a giant palm, along with a great many other exotic species, was transported from Loddiges’  to be displayed at the ‘new’ cast-iron and plate-glass Crystal Palace (originally built in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851).  

The ‘Giant Palm to Crystal Palace’ event was covered by the Illustrated Daily News, with a sketch of the 60-foot palm being pulled by 24 horses on its journey to Sydenham.

Little remains of the Loddiges today, save for their name preserved on a road in Hackney, and as a nod to their importance, perhaps, with those palm trees in front of Hackney Town Hall. But in the 1840s, Loddiges established an exotic arboretum of dozens of trees, from Acacia (originally from Africa and the Americas) to Zanthoxylum (China, Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal). Some of the trees can still be found in what is now Abney Park Cemetery.

Plant lovers might have heard the Loddiges name since several plants and birds have scientific names that include ‘Loddigesia’ or ‘Loddigesii’, such as the Marvellous Spatuletail hummingbird (Loddigesia mirabilis), and a miniature orchid known as Dendrobium loddigesii.

Many of the Loddiges family now lie in a family vault in the gardens of St John at Hackney church.

And so to our search…

In 1840, Jane Loddiges (daughter of George, who had expanded his father’s vision to bring exotic plants to the world) married Edward Cooke, himself a keen botanist and landscape and marine artist.

In 2006, Tricia O’Connell wrote an article for the Hackney Society’s magazine in which she revealed that, at the age of 50, she had gone back to art college, and, while studying at the Byam Shaw School of Art, discovered that she was related to the Loddiges family.

Tricia’s mother (nee Cooke) was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Jane and Edward Cooke.

Many of the beautiful hand-painted drawings in George’s Botanical Cabinet magazine were by George himself, and some by Edward Cooke (Jane Loddige’s husband). But we now know, thanks to some digging (pardon the horticultural pun), and the help of the Natural History Museum, that some of the drawings were by Jane Loddiges, attributed to ‘Miss Cooke’.

Today, we’d like your help to find Tricia again, as we believe that her story will be a great addition to the second print-run of one of the Hackney Society’s most popular books.

[This story was run by the Hackney Citizen in November 2025]

---

[1] The Hackney Society is a membership organisation that advocates for the conservation of Hackney’s rich heritage, as well as encouraging exemplary new design.

 [2] The Guildhall Library holds a full run of the Botanical Cabinet 1817-1833 (Reference GC 1.4), which forms part of the Library of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners. If you would like to visit to look at these volumes, do bring along proof of your name and address.