The History of Crowders Nurseries

It is now over 200 years since William Crowder first established the nurseries in Horncastle in 1798.  The family’s connection with horticulture and the nursery business goes back even further, as William came from a family of horticulturists in and around Doncaster.  His father was gardener at Loversall Hall, south of Doncaster, and his uncle, Robert Wood Crowder, ran a nursery specialising in rare plants.

Within five years of starting the nursery William Crowder was expanding and as a result rented over 4 acres of land from Sir Joseph Banks.  Banks had inherited his father’s Lincolnshire estate and had used his wealth to finance Captain Cook’s 1768 round-the-world voyage in the Endeavour.  He himself led a team of naturalists, bringing back almost 2,000 species of plants unknown in Europe.  Since then he had taken charge of Kew Gardens and had become President of, what is now, the Royal Horticultural Society.

One possible theory for William Crowder starting a nursery in Horncastle was the opportunity to satisfy the demand arising from the Enclosure Act for quickthorn hedging plants.

The business passed to William’s son Anderson who, in 1841, opened a shop in the High Street of Horncastle, which had previously been a town house for Joseph Banks.  Anderson’s family subsequently moved in to live above the shop.  He was succeeded by his son William, who, after his father died aged 80 in 1873, bought the Thimbleby Nurseries from the Hotchkin family.

William died in 1884, aged 57, and the business was taken on by his son William Ashley.  He married Ann Harrison and subsequently acquired land the other side of the Lincoln Road from Thimbleby Nurseries in 1891 when her father died.

William Harrison Crowder, son of William Ashley and Ann, was born in 1894 and served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery in France in the Great War.  He was awarded the DSO in March 1918, before being taken prisoner.  His brother, Robert Ashley, was killed in active service in 1917.

William Ashley Broderick Crowder, father of the current Managing Director, Robert, was born in 1929.  During the 20’s and 30’s there were difficult times for most businesses and Crowders survived by servicing the needs of the local community.  They attended markets in all the county’s market towns, supplying farm seeds as well as trees, shrubs, bulbs and forest plants.

In the 40’s and during the Second World War the Thimbleby Nurseries had to be given over entirely to food production and particularly fruit trees.  In 1950 William Ashley Broderick Crowder entered the business and started laying the foundations for the transformation of the company from a local supplier into a national firm that Robert Crowder continued.