| Who knew (apart from our Jane Baxter, Volunteer and Friend of the Palm House, of course!) that the Palm House was known locally as ‘The Banana House’ in days gone by? Helping out in the Archive recently I came across an article by Frazer Harrison, writing in the Sunday Times, in 1993. He recalls being taken to the Palm House by his mother who always called it ‘the Banana House’ – a name that stuck for many people at the time – due to the
“….huge swags of green bananas that hung 30ft above our heads. These trees, named musta paradisiaca, grew so vigorously they occasionally had to be culled. Their fruit destined to remain unripened, but its existence was proof of the efficiency of the Palm House’s two Cornish boilers and 4,000ft of hot-water pipes”
By a coincidence, researching the Corporation minutes, an entry on the ‘Yates Thompson greenhouse’ (the name didn’t stick!) revealed that, in December 1896, there was a gift of six large banana plants from a Capt. Jefferie of ‘The Statesman’ of the Harrison Line. It appears the banana pants were a great success. In the 1930s The Liverpool Echo was reporting on the banana crop (pictured). It would be lovely if the ‘huge swags of bananas’ owed their existence to the captain’s gift, one of several from the community when the Palm House opened.
There is a great tradition of growing fruit in the Palm House. In 1963 the Daily Post reported on the crop of lemons, oranges and bananas – all given away to a local children’s hospital (and grown by Mr Edward Williams). Our lovely grapefruit carried on the tradition. |
