11/15/2023 0 Comments Charlotte business journal plaqueHere Guilfoyle’s place of birth is listed as the small Irish village of Moneygall, Kings County, and since Moneygall lies on the border between County Offaly (modern-day Kings County) and County Tipperary, this minor confusion of county boundaries seems immaterial. The other is the entry for Guilfoyle on the passenger lists compiled in 1849 for the voyage of the Steadfast to Sydney, which shows the detail supplied by Guilfoyle himself at the time of his assisted passage to Australia. One is an obituary for Guilfoyle published in Freeman’s Journal, which gives Michael’s birthplace as County Tipperary. This is at odds with the detail in at least two other sources. Pescott assumes that the relevant branch of the Guilfoyle family had already settled in England before Michael’s birth (Pescott p. 1-2).ĭespite the level of detail apparently available for the early history of the Guilfoyle family (with all the variant renderings of its name as McGuilfoyle and Kilfoyle) no unambiguous record of the nineteenth-century birthdate, birthplace and parentage of Michael Guilfoyle, the nineteenth-century nurseryman of Double Bay, has been traced. Pescott claims with some certainty that the grounds of Summer Grove, a notable estate west of Mountmellick, are attributable to Guilfoyle ancestors who were already involved in horticultural and agricultural pursuits (Pescott p. By the 18th century, according to Pescott’s account, the relevant branch of the family was settled in the village of Mountmellick – a centre for cotton and woollen manufacturing in that era, located in in County Laois. Family background – France, Ireland, EnglandĪustralian author Richard Pescott in his study of Michael Guilfoyle’s son William traced the Guilfoyle family origins to France, from where one branch is supposed to have moved to Ireland early in the Irish Mediaeval period (between 1250-1600) to work in the linen industry. However, Guilfoyle’s true legacy is found wherever examples of his landscaping eye survive, or where plants derived from his nursery’s stock still flourish. Sole among the local nurserymen, the Guilfoyle’s family is commemorated in a street named in its honour, and in the immediate vicinity of Michael’s nursery. William was responsible for the transformation of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne into a world class example of its type.įurther to the contribution which Michael Guilfoyle made to the area through his landscaping work and the success of his local business, he also participated in the life of the area through his service as an alderman on Woollahra Council, which extended from December 1861 to July 1873. The name of Guilfoyle gained further local regard through the achievements of William Guilfoyle, Michael’s son, whose career made the family’s name a household one further afield. It was said of him in one obituary: He was especially expert in the difficult art of hybridization, and his triumphs in that direction would have gratified a Darwin himself. Guilfoyle’s acknowledged supremacy went beyond this pioneering status his work on a number of the most important local properties had conclusively established his credentials in garden design, and he was respected especially for his horticultural knowledge, his success in the acclimatisation of introduced species, and in propagation and plant breeding - on all of which the garden fashions of the day particularly depended. Mortimer, Gelding and Ferguson were following in the footsteps of Michael Guilfoyle, the founder of Double Bay’s ‘Exotic Nursery’, who was the first to establish a nursery business in the bayside locality. These retail enterprises were typically launched as sidelines to their proprietors’ work in the evolving landmark gardens in the district’s estates, but nevertheless developed into notable establishments in their own right : George Mortimer’s Cross Street Nursery, Messrs J and W Gelding‘soutlet in the same locality,and Francis Ferguson’s Australian Nursery on the New South Head Road. During the second-half of the nineteenth century a number of nurserymen set up in business in the fertile Double Bay valley.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |