Richard Buxton (botanist)

Richard Buxton was born on 15 January 1786 at Sedgley Hall Farm in the parish of Prestwich, near Manchester. At the age of 16, Buxton was illiterate, but he taught himself to read. In 1826 he on Kersal Moor he met John Horsefield, a handloom weaver from Whitefield, who was president of the Prestwich Botanical Society and he introduced him to other local botanists such as James Percival, Thomas Heywood and John Shaw. In 1833 he attended a botanical meeting in Prestwich and in 1839 he helped to compile the Flora Mancuniensis (1840) along with Leo Hartley Grindon,.

In 1849, aged 62, he published a book: A Botanical Guide to the Flowering Plants, Ferns, Mosses, and Algæ, Found Indigenous Within Sixteen Miles of Manchester about his finds in the Prestwich and nearby areas. Buxton died on 2 January 1865 at Limekiln Lane, Ardwick, aged 79 and was buried at St Mary's, Prestwich. His obituary in the Manchester Courier, described him as "probably one of the best British botanists, so far as flowering plants are concerned, that Lancashire has produced",

John Horsefield  (Botanist)

John Horsefield was an English handloom weaver and amateur botanist after whom the daffodil Narcissus 'Horsfieldii' is named. Horsefield had little formal schooling, and acquired most of his botanical knowledge through self-study and involvement in local botanical groups. He founded the Prestwich Botanical Society. Born on 18 July 1792, at probably Besses o' th' Barn in Whitefield. He made several botanical discoveries and was the first to find the Entosthodon templetoni moss in England. He lived most of his life near Whitefield in Lancashire, in dire poverty.

He pursued his interests by founding the Prestwich Botanical Society on 11 September 1820, presiding over meetings in a pub where plant specimens were brought together for identification. He was president of the society for 32 years, during which time at least 131 books were purchased by the society for communal use. Writing in December 1829, Horsefield explained that the Prestwich Society met on the second Monday of each month and usually had between 12 and 20 members, who were charged a monthly 6d. subscription. Buxton was of the opinion that Horsefield was "not a mere country herbalist, but an excellent scientific botanist". John Horsefield died on 6 March 1854, aged 62 and is buried on 10 March 1854 at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Prestwich.

Leopold Hartley Grindon

Leopold Hartley Grindon was born in Bristol on 28 March 1818 and educated at Bristol College. He moved to Manchester when aged 20 where he spent a year as an apprentice in a warehouse before becoming a cashier for John Whittaker & Company's cotton business where he stayed until 1864. Grindon, , developed an early interest in botany and was self-taught in other areas of science, such as astronomy and geology. At the age of 13, he started a collection of dried plants and by 18 he envisaged the creation of a herbarium of all the cultivated and wild plants found in Britain.  In 1860, Grindon and others, founded the Manchester Field-Naturalists' Society . He attended the Mechanics' Institute and was appointed a lecturer in botany at the Manchester Royal School of Medicine .When Grindon moved to Manchester,  where he lived for a 30 years. In 1883 he moved to Cecil Street in Greenheys where he died aged 87 in 1904. His seminal work was The Manhester Flora, was published in 1859. Not from Bury he built on the work of Buxton who he knew and visited many sites in Prestwich producing further later records.

He was also auther of Manchester Walks and Wild Flowers with a Chapter on Mere Clough

1882.. In this he reported 'Mere Clough too is not what it was.......the grove of trees that once filled he bottom has disappeared.  The best of the wild flowers has also disappeared or nearly so and the brook is less often limpid than impure.'

Cosmo Melvill wrote the 'Flora of Prestwich' in the 1916 'History and Traditions of Prestwich.' He was a aquaintence of Grindon and he charts the botanical decline of Prestwich with Urbanisation.  He frequently reports that species previously recorded as 'it is no longer here' or 'formerely common' or 'I have searched for it in vain.' Nonetheless he provides information on species present in Mere Clough from the early 20th centuary as listed below.

Listed Below are records taken from the above books and compared to today..