Heritage Open Days: Everyday Histories #1: Mrs Key, Gardener of Middleton Hall
The theme for Heritage Open Days in 2026 is “Everyday Histories”. This theme aims to draw attention to the daily working lives of our ancestors. For Heritage Open Day Week, from 11th to 20th September 2026, Middleton Hall Trust will run a series of blogs highlighting various “ordinary” workers from its long history.
References to the people who worked on the Estate have survived from Middleton Hall’s earliest time, albeit they are extremely patchy. Most that are referred to, as was common nationally until the 19th century, were male. Before the 17th century, it is rare, even nationally, to have a documented reference to a female worker by name. This post will focus on one named female worker at Middleton Hall from the 16th century: Mrs Key.
Despite Mrs Key being mentioned a number of times in the household accounts, we know no more about her personally due to her pre-dating most other types of records. The accounts recorded that she was paid:
On Lady Day 1522: Quarterly wages of 10 pence for keeping the gardens at Middleton Hall. This was the equivalent at that time of about 1 days' work for a skilled tradesman, or the equivalent of about £21.67 today.
In December 1526: Paid 3 shillings 4 pence for the keeping of the gardens for a year. This was the equivalent at that time of about 5 days' work for a skilled tradesman, or the equivalent of about £73.55 today.
On 12th April 1527: Paid 4 pence for a week’s work making candles. This was the equivalent of about £7.35 today.
She was the only person identified as working specifically on the gardens at this time and it has thus been concluded that she was the head gardener at Middleton Hall.
In the 16th century, the management of the manorial household was firmly delineated between the domain of the lord and the domain of the lady. Gardens were classified as being within the domain of the lady. Our wider accounts confirm this, because repeated gifts of seeds and other plants and similar purchases specifically for garden work were all recorded under the name of the lady rather than her husband.
The lady of the house would directly employ female gardeners from the lower classes. For “respectable” women, gardening was viewed as an occupation in which they could earn money. It was thus considered a vital type of occupation for not only unmarried women or widows but also the wives of Estate workers, who would use it to supplement the household income.
Until the Company of Gardeners was established in London in 1605, gardeners were not professionals. Before then, the occupation was dominated by women who were employed casually and afterwards this changed to men who were employed full-time. It is known that the first full-time professional gardener at Middleton Hall was called Edward Hancocks aka Gardner and he was working at Middleton Hall in 1602. Hence, the record of Mrs Key and then Edward Hancocks at Middleton Hall is rare evidence of this professional change.
Women, even after professionalisation, were widely employed as casual “weeders”, which was viewed as unskilled work. They were normally nameless in records. Nevertheless, their work was vital to the continued maintenance of the gardens. Their work was physically demanding, monotonous, poorly paid, with often long 12-hour days. It involved tasks such as weeding, pest control (checking for insects) and fruit-picking.
The entry in which Mrs Key was paid for the “keeping of the gardens” for the year confirms that she was not a casual worker and was undertaking work beyond that of a weeder. An employed gardener’s role was split between two distinct areas – tending and keeping. Tending involved the cultivation, weeding and planting work. However, keeping also involved the maintenance, guarding and protection of the garden, specifically from the threats of weather, pests and theft. Together, these would have involved tasks such as: planting; sowing; weeding; grafting; pruning; harvesting; storing produce; and plant protection. Mrs Key’s status would also suggest that she had been hired to keep all of the varied types of gardens at Middleton Hall.
Keepers of a garden, like Mrs Key, would normally live on site. Middleton Hall, for centuries, had a gardener’s cottage located just to the south of the Hall, but it is known that the cottage was only established there in the 19th century. There were also various other buildings in close proximity to the Hall that were used as accommodation for workers, but no record has indicated whether a gardener ever lived in one of those. Finally, further afield there were numerous settlements within the Estate where the workers also lived. However, there is currently no known specific evidence that indicates where Mrs Key lived.
Mrs Key was more than just a gardener; she was also paid for candle-making. It was not unusual for gardeners to undertake other Estate activities when the gardening jobs were quiet. As gardening was considered an unskilled job in Tudor times, those workers would often be transferred to other household activities when the need arose. The process of making candles was monotonous. It involved continually dipping into the fat or wax and it often took over 100 dips for each candle. Hence, this required a similar patience to that which female gardeners were hired for.
There was a further cross-over between gardening and candle-making because many items that the gardener would have been responsible for were used in the process. In particular, many botanical ingredients were used for scenting the candles such as: lavender; rosemary; thyme; marjoram; rose petals; and violets. All of these are known to have been grown at Middleton Hall.
Most candles in Tudor England were made of tallow, but these were primarily made in autumn, when animals were slaughtered for winter. The second most common type of lighting was rushlights. There were plenty of rushes at Middleton, but they would have been harvested, collected and dried in late summer. Hence, neither of these could relate to when Mrs Key made the candles.
The third type of candle, which was used only by the nobility and the church, was beeswax. April was a critical month for beekeeping. In that month, gardeners were instructed to open their beehives. It is known that Middleton Hall had extensive beehives in the 16th century, which normally covered all of the Estate’s needs for honey and other bee-related products. Historically, gardeners were normally responsible for the management of the bees as well as the plants. Therefore, it is thought probable that this explains why Mrs Key, as an aside to her gardening duties, was also making beeswax candles.
Further Reading:
W. H. Stevenson, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1911. p.387.
Mark Dawson, Plenti and Grase, 2009.
Author - Debbie Jordan, Middleton Hall Volunteer.
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