Have you seen those very posh summerhouses at some of the larger garden centres? They tempt you inside and then you catch sight of the price. £10k, £15K or £20K. No problem. I’ll have two. And what about buying one of those expensive super-duper barbeques that the British weather will only allow me (or rather my wife) to use twice a year? This need for glamping-style gardening isn’t new. William Howitt, in an article for Tait’s Magazine in 1835, referred to the summerhouses on the garden allotments of Nottingham:
“Every garden has its summerhouse; and these are of all scales and grades, from the erection of a few tub-staves, with an attempt to trail a pumpkin or a wild hop over it, to substantial brick houses with glass windows, good cellars for a deposit of choice wines, a kitchen and all necessary apparatus, and a good pump to supply them with water… Some of these places, which belong to the substantial tradespeople, have cost their occupiers from one to five hundred pounds, and the pleasure they take in them may be thence imagined; but many of the mechanics have very excellent summerhouses…”
“A deposit of choice wines” sounds good and would go well with my flashy summerhouse and super-duper barbeque. For someone to pay £500 for a summerhouse in 1835 was pretty good going. Apparently, £500 in 1835 was equivalent in purchasing power to about £62,000 in 2018. Wow! The “substantial tradespeople” must have been doing pretty well. And according to a Nottingham Journal writer in 1886, summerhouses weren’t the only buildings on the Hunger Hills:
“In some of the gardens a vine-house, a cucumber frame, or a small conservatory for flowers had been added. In most a summerhouse was provided for the wife to sit with her knitting and watch the husband at work in the garden.”
£62,000 for a summerhouse in which “the wife” can sit and do her knitting suggests that it might have been substantially cheaper to buy a jumper.
