Two innovative and busy A
If there are two men whose names are writ large and bold across the horticultural history of Argyll and whose vision and entrepreneurial skills have withstood the test of time, they are John Campbell (1723-1806) and Thomas Kennedy (1769-1849). The first was a duke and the second a gardener and plantsman.
John, 5th Duke of Argyll, was an improver and a man on a mission. When he inherited the great Argyll Estate from his father in 1770, he took it from feudalism into modernity by replacing dues in work, produce and military service with a cash economy. He encouraged the building of stone houses, barns and enclosures, and the planting of millions of trees for commercial, agricultural and ornamental purposes. His family were among the first landowners in Argyll to employ professional gardeners and plantsmen, bringing visitors from far and near to marvel at what had been achieved at Inveraray and elsewhere in Argyll.
By way of encouraging his tenants to plant trees, Duke John made sure that every so often they presented themselves at Inveraray where they were given a crash course in forestry and a bundle of saplings to plant around their own homes. Descendants of some of these trees have been pointed out to me at Laudale, Savary and Fiunary, and elsewhere on the old Argyll Estates in Morvern. Further information on John, 5th Duke of Argyll’s remarkable work can be found in the late Eric Cregeen’s excellent book, Argyll Estate Instructions, Mull, Morvern and Tiree 1771-1805, published for the Scottish History Society in 1964, and Inveraray and the Dukes of Argyll, by Ian G Lindsay and Mary Cosh (1973).
Thomas Kennedy first rose to public prominence on the publication in 1837-8 of Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, by Scott’s son-inlaw, John Gibson Lockhart.
In 1814, the year in which he published his poem, The Lord of the Isles, Scott (not then ‘Sir’) embarked on a six-week cruise round Scotland on the lighthouse yacht Pharos as a guest of the Commissioners of Northern Lights. He landed at Oban on September 1 and recorded in his
diary: “Heard of an active and industrious man, who had set up a nursery of young trees, which ought to succeed, since at present, whoever wants plants must send to Glasgow; and how much the plants suffer during a voyage of such length, any one may conceive.”
Thomas Kennedy was born at Kirkoswald, Ayrshire. Aged 24 he took up the post of gardener at Ardchattan Priory on the north shores
of Loch Etive, where he stayed until 1805 when he leased an area of ground in burgeoning Oban from the Campbells of Dunstaffnage on which the old United Free Church and the Argyllshire Gathering Hall now sit. Here he set up a nursery supplying trees and seeds to most of the proprietors in the county, including Mull and most likely Morvern and the islands.
His business must have been a great success because soon he was leasing other properties in Oban. He was the principal founder of the Secession Church and its adjoining schoolhouse, which was built on Tweedale Street in
1835. Here Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, John Bright (a Quaker, British radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies), Herbert Spencer (English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, prominent classical liberal political theorist and a frequent guest at Ardtornish, Morvern ) and scores of other distinguished visitors worshipped as it was the only church in Oban at the time where English was preached, all the others having a Gaelic service in the forenoon.
In his garden nursery Thomas Kennedy built
an accurate sun dial which provided the correct time for the local watch and clock makers to set their time pieces by. So popular had he become, he was elected one of the first four town councillors when Oban was erected by charter into a Burgh of Barony in 1820. He died, aged 80 years, in the house he had built in George Street and was buried in the Old Parish Church graveyard, Glencruitten Road, alongside his wife, Mary Forsyth, who predeceased him. There were at least six children.
Although Thomas’s family are said to have followed in his footsteps, I can find no references to them continuing to run the nursery after his death.
Recognising the importance of Oban as a sea port, his eldest son Robert had a schooner built about 1816 which traded regularly between Argyll and Glasgow. It was named the Anne and Jean, after his two sisters. He also owned a yacht called the Nora Creena and another vessel with a screw propeller powered by manual labour.
To this small fleet was added a second schooner or wherry, the Isabella, built to carry tourists to Staffa and Iona long before the arrival of David MacBrayne’s ships.
Thomas, the second son, left Oban and went to Kilmarnock where he started up an engineering business called Glenfield & Kennedy and invented the world’s first water meter.
The lucrative business lives on as Glenfield, Dams Reservoirs and Hydro Solutions.