Gardenia Avenue's lady in the caravan

From the deeds of his parents' house in Limbury, Stephen learnt about the orchard history of his street. He remembers scrumping and a mysterious lady in a caravan guarding the fruit. Gardenia Avenue was one of Luton's orchard hubs of the 1920s, as can be seen in the Limbury sugar fraud case. 

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LO: Stephen, so you said you know about an orchard where you lived?

Stephen: In Gardenia Avenue, which is near St Joseph's Church. Behind the church is the junior school, but before the junior school was built and in that area there, was a whole orchard. And the house that I used to live in was one of the oldest houses in the street. And when we found some maps from my mother and father's deeds, when, after they passed away, we could see that the whole area that covers Gardenia Avenue from Marsh Road to Blundell Road, that whole area was a fruit tree orchard.

LO: So the house was built in 1904 and the orchard would have been in existence then?

SA: That’s right, yeah. 

LO: And when would it have been [chopped down]?

SA: The juniors school then wanted the infant school, so they built the infant school next door to it, but still left some of the orchard. And there was a lady who used to live in a caravan there for many years, but then she passed away. I don't know whether she had some right to the land, but then afterwards, then what they did is they took the rest of it away to use for the St Joseph's primary school.

LO: Are there any trees left? 

SA: No. In fact, in our garden, we did have a few fruit trees that were probably part of the original orchard. But unfortunately, soon after the house got sold and moved on, they completely took away that. There was a plum tree, Victoria plum. That's the one, yeah. We used to have a huge, big - towards this ceiling - Victoria plum tree that used [to have] masses of fruit every year. Used to have to give it away so much. We also had cherry trees. There was damson and trees, pear trees.

SA: [I] used to go scrumping in this orchard with my cousin. And it used to have greengages in there as well.

LO: Did no-one own the land? 

SA: Well, let's just say I don't know who originally owned the land.

LO: Nobody shooed you off?

SA: No. Yes. The lady in the caravan used to [shout] "What are you doing here? Run away, go on!" So we used to come running out in the back of the garden. 

LO: Did anyone do anything with the fruit? 

SA: Not necessarily from the orchard area, but from our garden… we used to… my mum used to make plum jam, damson jam…

LO: Sounds delicious. 

SA: It was! [laughs]. It was. I mean, that's going back. That was 1962-63. That was when we first moved to that house.

(Recorded on 1 February 2024)

Gardenia Avenue in 1928