Flora Place

"Flora Place - what a suggestive name - alas! not much Flora about it now. there were gardens in the front of all these houses, some only plain grass - others with decorative shrubs, flowers, etc. - according to the taste or otherwise of the occupiers. These gardens as you may see, have all been converted into shops - necessary I suppose, but oh! the pity of it."

So wrote Samuel Weekes in the 1920s; Weekes had been born in Flora Place eighty years earlier, when the houses were comparatively new - but it was not on account of those long gardens that this street was called Flora Place. Rather the Flora connection was with Rendle's nienteenth-century Botanic Gardens that for many yers had been close by.

Difficult as it is now to imagine but at one time this was an area that was an area that was blessed with flora and fauna and as well as Rendle's nuseries there was also Pontey's Nursery off Western Approach remebered in the naming of King's Gardens.

EH 22 July 1995