The latest online version of my working database is now available, as always if you can add anything or suggest any corrections please get in touch.
Hi,
I created this website back in 1998 and everything on it has been added by myself and a handful of regular contributors as a labour of love, all hosting costs and subscriptions have come out of my pocket. Due to the current dire financial situation in this country my day job has recently come under threat and I am looking for ways to save money in case the worst happens. In order to help safeguard the future of this website and offer an opportunity for people to contribute to it I have decided to add a Paypal link (below). I will also consider any offers of sponsorship but a profound personal dislike of advertising means I won’t be following the usual route of adding Google Ads or multiple affiliate links to these pages.
Please believe me when I say I have no intention of turning this into a subscription site or trying to make a profit, all I am looking for is help with paying the bills associated with it. I will use any donations over and above that to fund subscriptions to other websites which offer research materials that I am currently unable to take advantage of.
Any donation you can make will be most welcome, thanks in advance.
Hugh Fiske
I added another medal to my small collection today via a well-known internet auction site. Private 19923 Lawrence Samuel Fiske enlisted with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Bray, Co. Wicklow but he was originally from Greenwich in East London and was descended from a long line of Suffolk farm workers. He was killed in action on the 17th August 1917 during the infamous Battle of Passchendaele and is buried at Potijze Chateau Grounds Cemetery north-east of Ypres. His Fiske line is as follows:
48 year old search and rescue helicopter pilot based at Chivenor died in an electrical accident at home, only weeks after saving a merchant seaman in perilous conditions over the Atlantic.
Link to This is North Devon
Link to RAF News
Studhaugh hamlet is about half a mile north of Laxfield as the crow flies and was home to successive generations of the Fisk(e) family from the 14th century to around 1675. The Manor Farmhouse as it survives today dates mainly from the mid 16th century. Link to British listed buildings website.
The term fisking is blogosphere slang describing a point-by-point criticism that highlights perceived errors, or disputes the analysis in a statement, article, or essay.
Obituary published in The Times Online, Sept 18 2004.
IT IS largely thanks to Jim Fisk that clematis can be found in almost every size, style and type of garden.
Fisk left school aged 14 and that year, 1926, he went to work at Notcutts Nursery in Woodbridge, Suffolk, for ten shillings a week. It was there that he fell in love with clematis although Notcutts was, and still is, a general nursery selling a wide variety of plants.
During the war he joined the Royal Navy and served in the Mediterranean. In 1946 he used his demob money (£80) to set up Fisk’s Clematis Nursery in Westleton, Suffolk. It was one of the first specialist nurseries but it was a modest affair, the only garden building being a small greenhouse. In order to make ends meet he worked as the village postman until 9am, which gave him the rest of the day to work with his beloved plants.
Within a few years he had made a local man, Edward Collett, partner in his business. Together they toured flower shows in a second-hand lorry kitted out with a couple of hammocks and a Primus stove for overnight stays.
Fisk’s expertise was in introducing new plants. A “new” plant in itself was not enough for Fisk, who would test and trial every introduction and put it on sale only if he felt it worthwhile.
His rigorous search for excellence made Fisk a beacon for clematarians throughout the world. Through this international network of growers he made many superb introductions such as the large, striped, pink ‘Doctor Ruppel’ from Argentina, the violet ‘Haku Ookan’ from Japan, and the vigorous, deep blue C. macropetala ‘Wessleton’, named after his home village of Westleton but using the old spelling.
During the Cold War, Fisk followed in the footsteps of the Empress Josephine, who imported roses from this country during the Napoleonic Wars. He introduced clematis from behind the Iron Curtain. They came from the worldfamous breeder Brother Stephan Franck in Poland and included the silvery-blue ‘Fryderyk Chopin’.
As Fisk’s reputation grew, so too did the demand for his plants. Orders poured in from Australia, America, Japan, Argentina, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Fisk became editor of the Royal Horticultural Society’s clematis handbook, while his magnificent clematis displays were a regular part of the society’s Chelsea Flower Show for more than 30 years and set a new standard for exhibitors.
His influence went far beyond clematis specialists, thanks to his books including Success With Clematis (1962) and Clematis, The Queen of the Climbers (1975). His style was authoritative, warm and fluent even when dealing with the vexed question of pronunciation: “. . . it will always be called by its proper name, clematis, which comes from the Greek and means ‘a vine branch’. Clematis, should always be pronounced with a short ‘a ’ as in the word ‘America’, all three syllables being equally accented: clem a tis”.
The foreword to Fisk’s Success with Clematis was written by Rowland Jackman, descendant of the great George Jackman, who produced one of our most popular hybrids, the large purple Jackmanii, in 1862.
The latter half of the 19th century had been a boom time for clematis. Jackman’s nursery list included 343. By the early 20th century clematis wilt, a devastating fungal disease, together with a dearth of interesting varieties, made clematis an unpopular garden plant.
Effective fungicide and Fisk’s introductions put clematis back on the garden map and, in 1997, Fisk’s work was recognised with the MBE for services to horticulture.
The accolade was not enough to prevent the closure of his nursery two years later, due to Fisk’s age (he was 87) and competition from garden centres.
Friends and colleagues, including the former chairman of the British Clematis Society’ Dr John Howells, remember Fisk with great affection as a modest, gentle and generous man who was always willing to share his expertise and help others in the field.
Fisk was an honorary member of both the British Clematis Society and the International Clematis Society and, for his 80th birthday, the British society dedicated a day’s meeting to a celebration of Fisk’s contribution to the plant. Messages poured in from all over the world, including one from the US which said that, if there were royalty in the world of clematis, Jim Fisk would be king.
Jim Fisk, MBE, clematis expert, was born on March 9, 1912. He died on August 17, 2004, aged 92.
Former Lord Mayor of Bristol, Alderman Jack Fisk, who was a councillor for more than 40 years, has died at the age of 87.
Bristol Evening Post, 6 June, 2009
Australian bush fires claimed the lives of Lizzie and Dalton Fiske, wife and son of firefighter Glen Fiske in February 2009.
Programme transcript for the ABC Four Corners report ‘Eye of the Storm’ first broadcast 27 April 2009.
Rural development economist and eldest son of Sir Ernest Fisk.
The Sydney Morning Herald, October 17, 2009
