Maud Grieve
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Maud Grieve in 1928 Sophie Emma Magdalene Grieve (née Law; 4 May 1858 – 21 December 1941), also known as Maud, Margaret, Maude or Mrs. Grieve, was the principal and founder of The Whins Medicinal and Commercial Herb School and Farm at Chalfont St. Peter in
Buckinghamshire, England Buckinghamshire (, abbreviated ''Bucks'') is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshir ...
. Grieve was a Fellow of the
Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr ...
, President of the British Guild of Herb Growers, and Fellow of the British Science Guild. She is best known for her 1931 book, ''A Modern Herbal''.


Life

Grieve was born in 1858 at 75 Upper Street,
Islington, London Islington ( ) is an inner-city area of north London, England, within the wider London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's #Islington High Street, High Street to Highbury Fields ...
.Baker, A. (2004-09-23). Grieve ée Law Sophia Emma Magdalene
aud The Australian dollar ( sign: $; code: AUD; also abbreviated A$ or sometimes AU$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; and also referred to as the dollar or Aussie dollar) is the official currency and legal tender of Au ...
(1858–1941), herb grower. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 2 Jan. 2018, Se
link
/ref> Grieve's father died in 1864 and she grew up in the care of relatives in
Beckenham Beckenham () is a town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley. Prior to 1965, it was part of Kent. It is situated north of Elmers End and Eden Park, east of Penge, south of Lower Sydenham and Bellingham, and west ...
, London, where she received a good education. Following the death of her uncle in 1879, she was left an inheritance of a £1000. There is no record of her whereabouts or activities during the following four years, however by 1883 she had travelled to India, where she met and married William Grieve (1846–1929) originally from
Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
. He was manager of the Bally Paper Mill near
Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...
from 1878 to 1894. Grieve was involved with charitable causes and had connections with a medical mission during her time in Calcutta. She and her husband lived in India until his retirement. Although William retired from the paper mills in 1894, the couple only returned to settle permanently back in England in the beginning of the 1900s. They lived in a number of places including
Hayes Hayes may refer to: * Hayes (surname), including a list of people with the name ** Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th president of the United States * Hayes (given name) Businesses * Hayes Brake, an American designer and manufacturer of disc brakes * Hay ...
in Middlesex and
Chartridge Chartridge is a village in Buckinghamshire, England situated two miles north-west of Chesham. Chartridge is also the name of a civil parish in Chiltern District which also includes the village of Bellingdon and the hamlets of Pednor, Hundri ...
in Buckinghamshire, before moving to the house that William had designed at Chalfont Common,
Chalfont St Peter Chalfont St Peter is a large village and civil parish in southeastern Buckinghamshire, England. It is in a group of villages called The Chalfonts which also includes Chalfont St Giles and Little Chalfont. The villages lie between High Wycombe a ...
around 1906. They named it The Whins after the yellow
gorse ''Ulex'' (commonly known as gorse, furze, or whin) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Fabaceae. The genus comprises about 20 species of thorny evergreen shrubs in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family Fabaceae. The species are na ...
that grew in the neighbourhood. She lived in Chalfont St Peter from 1906 to 1938. She initially created a
perennial In horticulture, the term perennial ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the year") is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. It has thus been defined as a plant that lives more than 2 years. The term is also ...
nursery on the grounds of the house, but at the outbreak of the First World War she turned the nursery into a herb farm to address the shortage of supplies of vital medicinal plants. In 1914 the Board of Agriculture published ''The Cultivation & Collection of Medicinal plants in England'' to deal with the shortage of drug supplies in Britain during the war. This was due to the disruption of the trade routes, most of the plants used were imported from continental Europe before the war. The drugs required were:
henbane Henbane (''Hyoscyamus niger'', also black henbane and stinking nightshade) is a poisonous plant belonging to tribe Hyoscyameae of the nightshade family ''Solanaceae''. Henbane is native to Temperate climate, temperate Europe and Siberia, and natu ...
,
foxglove ''Digitalis'' ( or ) is a genus of about 20 species of herbaceous perennial plants, shrubs, and biennials, commonly called foxgloves. ''Digitalis'' is native to Europe, Western Asia, and northwestern Africa. The flowers are tubular in sha ...
,
deadly nightshade ''Atropa bella-donna'', commonly known as deadly nightshade or belladonna, is a toxic perennial herbaceous plant in the nightshade family Solanaceae, which also includes tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant. It is native to Europe and Western Asia, ...
and
monkshood ''Aconitum'' (), also known as aconite, monkshood, wolfsbane, leopard's bane, devil's helmet, or blue rocket, is a genus of over 250 species of flowering plants belonging to the family Ranunculaceae. These herbaceous perennial plants are chiefl ...
. The National Herb Growing Association was set up by a group of educated women under the auspices of the Women's Farm & Garden Union. She was a founder member of the short lived National Herb Growing Association (1914–17) and later president of The British Guild of Herb Growers (est. 1918.) During the war she also started The Whins Medicinal and Commercial Herb School. After the war she continued promoting the benefits of herbs, writing over three hundred pamphlets on individual plants. These were edited by Hilda Leyel and were the main source of information in what has become ''A Modern Herbal'', which was published 1931. As the original pamphlets were only about English plants, Mrs. Leyel added American herbs to Mrs. Grieve's pamphlets and checked and edited the whole work, expanding it to eight hundred plants. In 1929 her husband's health became a concern and she decided to move away from herb production and training. She gave most of her stock to Dorothy Hewer. Hewer had started her herbal farm three years before near the Kentish village of Seal where she became known for her "Seal" lavender. Hewer had been inspired by Grieve and by the work of the gardening writer
Eleanour Sinclair Rohde Eleanour Sophie Sinclair Rohde (1881–1950) was a British gardener, garden designer, and horticultural writer. She authored thirty books on gardening between 1913 and 1948, and is best known for her book, ''The Scented Garden'', published in 19 ...
. Grieve had closed her training school and she encouraged Hewer to take on a few women helpers. Grieve wrote ''Culinary herbs and condiments'' and ''Roses and pot pourri: Plants of sweet scent and their employment in perfumery''.


Death and legacy

She died in 1941 in
Royston, Hertfordshire Royston is a town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the North Hertfordshire, District of North Hertfordshire and county of Hertfordshire in England. It is situated on the Prime meridian (Greenwich), Greenwich Meridian, which brush ...
. Her collections and pamphlets are held by the Special Collections Division of the Edinburgh University.Library: Reference: GB 0237 Dc.3.97/1-4; Dc.3.98; Title: Collection of material relating to Mrs. Maud Grieve, F.R.H.S (fl. 1937) Some of her correspondence letters are held in the Kew Herbarium library and others are in a private collection. Only a couple of her art works survive, an oil painting of an Indian street scene which she submitted to the 1884 Calcutta International Exhibition and the illustrations of croton plants, which are now in the Herbarium Library, Kew.


References


External links

*
"A Modern Herbal" online version
* "Medicinal Plants in Wartime"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grieve, Maud 1858 births 1941 deaths 20th-century British writers English horticulturists Herbalists People from Buckinghamshire People from Islington (district) Writers from the London Borough of Islington People from Beckenham Writers from the London Borough of Bromley