HILDA LEYEL (née Wauton)

The famous head master, Edward Thring, first taught me botany when I was a baby, in the School House garden and Uppingham fields. …though at the time I was only four…the names of the plants, like the dates of English kings, were impressed upon my mind so vividly that it has been impossible for me ever to forget them.

After Edward Thring’s death his daughter Sarah carried on my lessons, and I have never lost touch with the subject. …it was not until I had written my first book on herbs that the idea came to me to found the Society of Herbalists, and since 1926 I have done nothing else but research work in herbal medicine.

The extract is taken from Hilda Leyel’s ‘Editor’s Introduction’ to A Modern Herbal by Maud Grieve, 1931. In addition to her early teachers at Uppingham, Hilda may well have been influenced by an uncle on her mother’s side, Frederick Drewitt, who was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Among the books he wrote in retirement was The Romance of the Apothecaries’ Garden at Chelsea (1922; Chapman & Dodd); like David Prain (see ‘Maud Grieve’), Drewitt was educated in an age when a knowledge of materia medica was fundamental to a physician’s training.  It may be significant too, in helping Hilda to understand the physiological properties of herbs, that her husband, Carl Fredrik Leyel, although a theatre manager when they met, had been trained as an analytical chemist at University College, London (pers. comm., Peter A. Leyel, ‘Descendants of Lars Henrik Leijel’).

The library which Hilda Leyel collected was described by the art historian Wilfrid Blunt, who had a particular interest in botanical illustration, as ‘one of the finest privately owned collections of this country’. 

An interest in cooking broadened Leyel’s interests in herbs and she was inspired to write The Magic of Herbs: A Modern Book of Secrets, (1926: J Cape) which dealt with the uses of herbs in medicine and pharmacy. The book had a light touch, however, for it included recipes for cosmetics, perfumes, hair lotions and sleeping draughts.  Her broadening interests led her in the following year, 1927, to found ‘The Society of Herbalists’ (now called ‘The Herb Society’) and she opened at 10 Baker Street, London, ‘Culpeper House’, a shop for retailing herbs. It was the first of ten ‘Culpeper’ stores that were opened before the outbreak of WWII, they were named after Nicholas Culpeper the 17^th century botanist and herbalist.

In her Introduction to A Modern Herbal, Leyel had written, ‘Just before I opened Culpeper House, a list of Mrs Grieve’s monographs on herbs came to me through the post. I made her acquaintance, and after examining the pamphlets, thought they might be the nucleus of a much-needed modern herbal.  I took the monographs and the suggestion to Mr. Cape, who agreed to publish them if I would collate and edit them and see that the American herbs were also included’.

In 1937 a small factory was set up in Broad Campden, Gloucestershire, that produced herbal products for the Culpeper shops. Soon after the outbreak of WWII, this was taken over by the Culpeper Biochemical Company, which made health foods, medicines and drugs for the Royal Air Force using vegetables and fruits grown locally in the Vale of Evesham. Hilda Leyel’s son, Christopher, a Director of Culpeper Biochemical, had visited Germany in 1938 bringing back with him both the techniques and the machinery necessary to produce, inter alia, fruit and vegetable juices. The juices retained both chlorophyll and enzyme activity, both thought at the time to be especially beneficial⁴. Ironically, many farms in the Vale of Evesham relied during WWII on German labour, which was supplied by prisoners of war held in local camps.

An elderly Hilda was by this stage living in Sussex but she occasionally visited her son in Broad Campden.  Another resident of the village was her old friend, Olga Hartley, with whom she had co-authored The Gentle Art of Cookery (1925), and several subsequent cooking books, and who may have been responsible for introducing Hilda to Broad Campden.

In 1941 the life of the Herb Society was threatened by the Pharmacy and Medicines Bill which would have destroyed the work of herbalists in England. Influential friends, of which there was no shortage, rallied to support Hilda Leyel and the bill was modified to enable patients to obtain treatment on joining the Society.

Hilda Leyel continued to write books and pamphlets about herbs until her death in 1957. A fierce campaigner, she was another who vigorously supported Sir Albert Howard (see Gabrielle Matthaei on this site) in his campaign for the use of organic composts rather than synthetic fertilizers.

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I thank Peter Leyel, Hilda’s grandson, for his interest and generous provision of material.

References to published work, and other sources

1.     Women Who Meant Business. Hilda Leyel (1880-1957). Online (womenwhomeantbusiness.com). August 2021.

2.     The Golden Lady: Hilda Leyel. Online (The Gallipoli Oak.) March 2015.

3.     Leyel, Peter A. 2017. Back to the Beginning. Herb Society History. Herbs, 42, 11-13.

4.     Campden and District Historical and Archaeological Society. Notes and Queries, VI, Autumn 2010, and Spring 2011.

This is the end of the website.  Thanks for your visit.  I hope you enjoyed it and found something new.

Peter Ayres