Hugh Ronalds
| Hugh Ronalds | |
|---|---|
| Born |
4 March 1760 Brentford, England |
| Died | 18 November 1833 (aged 73) Brentford |
| Residence | Brentford |
| Known for | Apple cultivars |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Horticulture |
Hugh Ronalds (4 March 1760 – 18 November 1833) was an esteemed nurseryman and horticulturalist in Brentford, who published Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis: or, a Concise Description of Selected Apples (1831). His plants were some of the first European species to be shipped to Australia when the British colony was founded.
Born with a twin brother John, who died young, they were the fourth and fifth children of Hugh Ronalds Snr and Mary née Clarke. His younger brother Francis was the father of inventor Sir Francis Ronalds.
Hugh married his cousin Elizabeth Clarke and had ten children. The family held Unitarian beliefs and Hugh served as a trustee and treasurer of the Boston Chapel (now the Brentford Free Church) in Boston Manor Road, which his father and others had founded.
He lived all his life in an Elizabethan house adjacent to the vicarage of St Lawrence's church on Brentford High Street, and his youngest son Robert died in the same house in 1880. The home’s contents were then shipped to Hugh’s only great-grandchild Lucy Harris née Ronalds in London, Ontario, and much survives today in the Eldon House museum and the University of Western Ontario archives.
Hugh Ronalds Snr had established a nursery in Brentford in the late 1750s, at the same time that his friend William Aiton began to create what became the Kew Gardens on the opposite bank of the Thames. The two gardens benefited from their close relationship over many years.
Hugh and his older brother Henry Clarke Ronalds inherited the nursery on their father's death, with Hugh undertaking most of the management. He continued the steady expansion Hugh Snr had begun and by the time of his death had acquired nursery grounds at Brentford Butts; Brentford End (incorporating the former home of Attorney-general William Noy); Isleworth; Blondin/Niagara Streets, Northfields; Little Ealing; and East Bedfont, to supplement the home nursery near St Lawrence's.
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