History Gallery

The Temperate House- Basement plan of Octagon Building

Plan of the Temperate House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Basement plan of Octagon Building showing two boilers to warm one wing and Octagon Building

© RBG Kew

Plan of the Temperate House- smoke stacks, 1912

Plan of the Temperate House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, detailing new smoke stacks for boilers, H.M Office of works, Westminister, January 12th, 1912

© RBG, Kew

Robert Fortune

Robert Fortune (1812-1880) born in Berwickshire, Scotland, was a botanist and plant-hunter best known for smuggling tea plants out of China at the behest of the East India Company. Following the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, Fortune was awarded the position of the Society's Collector in China, visiting the region on four occasions, remaining there for two or three years each time. In 1846, he published his journals as Three Years Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China'. In 1848, he was tasked by the East India Company with collecting tea plants to establish plantations in India, breaking the Chinese monopoly. Disguising himself as a Chinese merchant, he travelled to the remote Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangsu provinces, regions rarely explored by Westerners, beyond the permissible day's journey from the agreed European treaty ports. The ruling Chinese government had outlawed the purchase of tea plants, but Fortune was able to coordinate the shipment of more than 20, 000 plants and seedlings, in Wardian cases, to the Himalayas, effectively initiating the tea industry in India

© RBG KEW