Document of the Month

May 2008

Samuel Reynolds Hole, grower of roses at Caunton Manor: menu card, 1894

Reference: DD/HC/87

Samuel Reynolds Hole was born in 1819, the son of Samuel Hole of Caunton Manor. In 1844 he was ordained to the curacy at Caunton where he remained until 1887 when he became Dean of Rochester.

Reynolds Hole was a very enthusiastic horticulturalist and is attributed with popularising the rose. He was promoter and honorary secretary of the first national rose show, which was held in the old St James' Hall in London on 3 July 1858. He subsequently became an enthusiastic organiser of flower shows, and many newscuttings survive in the Archives reporting on his work in this field.

He grew over 400 varieties of roses at Caunton Manor and he wrote many descriptions of the gardens there. His "Book about Roses, How to Grow Them and Show Them" (1869) helped to popularise the growing of roses and his more general work on gardening, "The Six of Spades" appeared in 1872. He was involved in the establishment of the National Rose Society (1876) and was later its president.

This menu card marks a celebratory dinner attended by Reynolds Hole at the Savoy hotel in New York in 1894. It is one of many documents surviving among the papers of the Hole family of Caunton Manor, which also include a detailed commonplace book begun in 1848, original manuscripts of some of Reynolds Hole's works, and a card marking his attendance at an exhibition of roses hosted by the Nottingham Garden Holders' association in 1894.

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