John Horsefield’s Tree

John Horsefield’s Tree.

Ian Pringle has an old newspaper article from the 1960s about the working class botanists of the Prestwich Botanical Society. It mentions that a tree was planted in honour of John Horsefield (1792-1854). John was the founder of the Society in 1820 and remained President until his death.

The tree had been planted at Besses Congregational Church on the “Bury side”.

John was also President of the District meetings of all the botanical societies in the Manchester area. He was immensely knowledgeable although a poor weaver living off Victoria Lane in Besses.

At a typical meeting up to 200 plant specimens would be piled on a table. John Horsefield would pick them up one by one, name them,give them their Latin name and give a wealth of detail about each plant. The specimen was then passed around the meeting.In that way “the knowledge of one became the knowledge of all”. That was a practical style of self-education for people who could not afford books or who couldn’t read.

Anyway Ian’s article from the Guide mentioned that a tree had been planted in the days when William Higgins was Pastor of Besses Congregational Church without giving a date.

A visit to the Besses Church confirmed that William Higgins had been Minister there from 1951 to 1960. A site inspection revealed three or four trees that might be candidates for Horsefield’s tree.

William Higgins was Minister in the 1950s and John Horsefield died on March 8th in 1854.This led to the suggestion that the tree was planted in Horsefield’s honour on the centenary of his death in March 1954.

Work on the microfilm version of the Prestwich Guide in Prestwich Library revealed a report on the tree planting in the edition of April 2nd 1954.

William Higgins had been the gardener at Springfield Hospital ( now NMGH) for 25 years. He retired to become Minister at Besses Congs. William wanted to brighten up the church, inside and out. William wanted to raise £1200 for this. He set off the process with the children by creating a “mile of pennies” in the schoolroom of the church.

Tree planting around the church was one of his ideas. He originally proposed to plant 8 trees. Then people began to say that they wanted to plant trees in memory of their loved ones. The number of trees to be planted grew to 21.

The tree planting took place on Saturday March 27th 1954. The Chairman of Whitefield U.D.C. planted the first one and then the rest followed on.

The tree in memory of John Horsefield was sponsored by one of his descendants, Fred Horsefield of 22 Victoria Lane, Besses. By a remarkable coincidence this was only a few yards away from where John Horsefield had lived. But John’s house went under the railway in 1879.

The Horsefield tree was a Laburnum. It was planted by Fred’s nephew, Ronald Horsefield, and his niece, Mrs.Morris.

Now the search is on this Spring to see if any Laburnums are still growing on the “Bury side” of the church.
The Heritage Society would also like to hear from any relations of Fred and Ronald Horsefield and Mrs.Morris.