46
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
leaving their native soil, found work in harvest time on the farms
in the district and there took up their abodes. In those days
the "Thatched House" was not at the corner of Crownfield
Road2 (formerly known as Cut Throat Lane, and before that
as Cann Hall Lane), but was actually a thatched house some
300 feet farther north, numbered 275 in the High Road, Leyton-
stone. The extent of the nursery in Turner's day was, as well
as I can estimate, some three acres, and covered what is now
Victoria Road and Union Road in the one direction and from
the High Road to Clarence Road in the other.
Having described the nursery, I now speak of the man who
occupied it: his name first appears in the Wanstead and Leyton
ratebooks in 1761. It seems certain that neither Spencer
Turner nor his successors actually owned the ground : they were
lessees. In 1824 the site belonged to a Major Colgrave and the
freehold ownership passed through other hands later until the
land became built over.
Turner was a noted horticulturist and it was in his nursery
at Holloway Down that he raised in the latter half of the 18th
century, "Turner's Oak," Quercus Turneri Willdenow, a sup-
posed hybrid between the holmoak, Q. ilex, and the common
oak, Q. pedunculata. It is a tree of spreading habit growing
sometimes to over 50 feet in height, with foliage which persists
throughout the winter until February or March, according to
the mildness or otherwise of the season. The leaves are downy
at the base, and the acorns, usually borne one or two on a stalk,
are one to two inches long. Several forms of Turner's Oak have
been named and may be seen at Kew.
Spencer Turner died on the 7th January, 1776, having
survived his wife, Sarah, 19 years. Besides a daughter, of whom
more anon, they had a son, Richard, who died in 1750, under a
year old: all three are buried under a headstone in Wanstead
churchyard, which is inscribed:—
In Memory of
Mr. Spencer Turner late of
this Parish, who departed this life
January the 7th 1776
Aged 48 years.
2 Crownfield Road was so named from a field which occupied the opposite corner of the road,
facing the present "Thatched House."