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To call the 80 acres of terraces, woodland glades, ponds and special plant collections on the Bodnant estate below Snowdonia in Denbighshire ‘Bodnant Garden‘, singular, is a huge understatement. Nevertheless, that is indeed the name of the beautifully tended plot gifted to The National Trust in 1949 after five generations of the family of the Garden’s founder, Henry Davis Pochin (1824-95) from Leicestershire, had maintained and shaped it, enjoyed and grew up in it since 1874.

After a successful entrepreneurial career as an industrial chemist and inventor, Pochin purchased Bodnant with its 25 farms, mansion and grassland for his ‘retirement’. Far from taking it easy, Pochin proceeded, with assistance from landscape gardener Edward Milner (1819-84), to reinforce the estate’s riverbanks and create various types of garden using plants and trees from near and far.

Thousands of visitors each year can stroll among the Garden’s features which include the Skating Pond, the Laburnum Arch, the Italianate Terraces, a waterfall and the Pinetum (an arboretum of American and Oriental conifers), to name but a few. Though the mansion itself is not open to the public, they can see the bathing pond in front of it and wonder whether the Pochins used his invention of white soap in it!

(Image: Stephen Craven at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Representation of the People Act of 1832 is also known as the Reform Act or even the Great Reform Act despite it being, in hindsight, a modest step towards a fairer system of electing Parliament in Britain. This was intentional, since the Prime Minister who pushed it through was himself moderate and mindful of potential uprisings if the reforms appeared too radical. He was Earl Charles Grey (1764-1845) from Northumberland and he was PM from 1830 to 1834, leading the Whig Party.

Of an adult male population of approximately 3,600,000, only 10% were eligible to vote before the Reform Act. The Act widened the criteria to enfranchise another 8% of men (but still no women). It also shuffled the constituencies to make them more representative and equal. During Grey’s premiership he also brought in laws restricting the employment of children and, in 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act.

Aside from these admirable achievements, Earl Grey’s name lives on in the type of tea that he introduced to British producers by way of a foreign gift about which there are various stories. It is a black tea with a recipe that includes extract of the bergamot orange and it has remained popular ever since he poured the first cup.

(Images LtoR: Earl Grey and map of new Leeds constituency of Leeds created in 1832, both by picryl.com, cup of Earl Grey tea by pxfuel.com / all Public Domain)