United Front
Gordon Hayward argues, none of this would have been possible without Paxton’s capable and devoted wife Sarah, who was every bit his equal
“I went to breakfast with poor dear Mrs. Gregory and her niece. The latter fell in love with me, and I with her, and thus completed my first morning’s work at Chatsworth….” So wrote Joseph Paxton in his diary on the evening in 1837 that concluded his first day as head gardener for ‘the Bachelor Duke’, the 6th Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth in Derbyshire.
Hannah Gregory, head housekeeper for the duke for 40 years, was the aunt of 26-year-old Sarah Brown. Paxton, then 23, was the son of a farm labourer. He had trained as a horticulturist and gardener and was now on the cusp of a meteoric rise through the spheres of
