James Bateman (18 July 1811 – 27 November 1897) was a British landowner and horticulturist. He developed Biddulph Grange after moving there around 1840, from nearby Knypersley Hall in Staffordshire, England. He created the gardens at Biddulph with the aid of his wife Maria and his friend and painter of seascapes Edward William Cooke. From 1865 to 1870 he was the founding president of the North Staffordshire Field Club, an organisation which researched local natural history and folklore.
Biography
He was born at Redvales near Bury in Lancashire. He matriculated at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1829, graduating from Magdalen College with a BA in 1834 and an MA in 1845. Over the twenty years he made a great deal of money in iron, engineering and banking. In 1871, Bateman and his sons (who included the painter Robert Bateman) gave up the house and gardens at Biddulph, and he moved to Kensington in London. He later moved to Worthing in Sussex, where he died on 27 November 1897.
Collector of plants "MA Magdalen College, Oxford, 1845, took great interest in collecting and cultivating tropical plants; FLS, 1833; FRS, 1838; fellow of Royal Horticultural Society; published writings on orchids and other horticultural subjects." He was a collector and scholar of orchids, President of the North Staffordshire Field Society, and served on the Royal Horticultural Society's Plant Exploration Committee. He especially loved rhododendrons and azaleas. He had a number of sons who grew up at Biddulph Grange, including the painter Robert Bateman. The naturalist, Charles Darwin "received a box of orchids from Bateman on 25 January 1862 (and) a letter from him dated 28 January 1862."
Garden designer He created the gardens at Biddulph with the aid of his botanist wife Maria and his friend and painter of seascapes Edward William Cooke. His gardens at Biddulph are a rare survival of the interim period between Capability Brown landscape garden and the High Victorian style. The gardens are compartmentalised and divided into themes. Bateman "was also responsible for laying out the Arboretum at Derby, the first public park in England."
Family On 24 April 1838, he married Maria Sybilla, third daughter of Rowland Egerton Warburton and sister of Peter Egerton Warburton; they had three sons, John, Rowland, and Robert (a notable painter), and a daughter, Katherine.
Publications The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala by James Bateman, c.1845 "Only 125 copies of this book were published. It is physically one of the largest botanical books ever published." A Second Century of Orchidaceous Plants, by James Bateman, London: L. Reeve & Co., 1867. "Large-4to (315 x 245 mm). pp. viii, with 100 beautifully handcoloured lithographed plates and descriptive text." A monograph of Odontoglossum by James Bateman, London: L. Reeve & Co., 1874. Facsimile of the title page
See also Edward William Cooke Biddulph Grange
References
Attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Carlyle, Edward Irving (1901). "Bateman, James". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
External links
James Bateman's work on orchids View digitized titles by James Bateman in Botanicus.org James Bateman and Orchid Literature Archived 27 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine Picture of James Bateman Archived 7 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine Missouri Botanical Garden – A monograph of Odontoglossum