The nursery we operate from today was, prior to 1970, four separate nurseries with different owners. These were Northfield, Northcroft, Four Acres and Hannah nurseries. On entering our main gate Hannah Nursery is to the right, and then driving left to our car park was Four Acres Nursery. Northfield Nursery comes next and then finally Northcroft Nursery.
Northcroft Nursery was the oldest of the four nurseries and is listed in Kelly’s Directory of 1922. Northfield, Four Acres and Hannah were originally fields of the same name becoming nursery sites around the mid 1920s. Northcroft has sold plants direct to the public off the nursery since before the Second World War. During the 1950s and 1960s at weekends this was also from a stall by the main road.
All the nurseries were badly damaged and had to be rebuilt or repaired when a V1 (Doodlebug) fell close by on 28 June 1944.
In the late 1960s, Northfield started selling bedding plants direct to the public from the nursery. This trade blossomed to such an extent that neighbouring Northcroft Nursery was purchased, combining the sales of plants off both nurseries from a new glasshouse that still exists today.
Part of Hannah Nursery and all of Four Acres Nursery were purchased in the late 1980s. Both nurseries were then in a derelict state and priority was the clearance of the glasshouses. During the late 1980s and through the 1990s all wooden glasshouses on the site were replaced with aluminium glasshouses.
