Florence Trevelyan
Italian conservationist (1852-1907)
Florence Trevelyan (1852–1907) of Taormina, Sicily, was an English gardener, builder of follies and pioneering wildlife conservationist.
Origins
She was born on 7 February 1852 in Newcastle upon Tyne and was baptised (as "Florence Trevelyan Trevelyan", her second name intended for retention after marriage) at St. Andrew's Church, Hartburn, Northumberland. She was the only surviving child of Edward Spencer Trevelyan (4th son of Sir John Trevelyan, 5th Baronet "of Nettlecombe in the County of Somerset" of Nettlecombe and of Wallington Hall in Northumberland) of Hallington Hall, Northumberland (about 6 miles south-west of Wallington), by his wife Catherine Ann Forster. Her father's childless eldest brother Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, 6th Baronet bequeathed Wallington to his junior first cousin Charles Edward Trevelyan, whilst Nettlecombe and the baronetcy descended to his nephew Sir Alfred Wilson Trevelyan, 7th Baronet (1831–1891). Florence, although senior to her first cousin the 7th Baronet, as a female was passed over in the succession to these family estates.
Career
Her father committed suicide in 1854 when Florence was aged two. Florence and her mother remained at Hallington Hall, where they appear to have taken a keen interest in establishing the pleasure gardens. After her mother's death in November 1877, and having inherited Hallington Hall, Florence and her first cousin, Harriet Perceval (a granddaughter of the Prime Minister Spencer Perceval) toured Europe for about two years, and Florence eventually settled at Taormina in Sicily in 1884, which she made her permanent home.
Rumour of royal scandal
The Taorminese lawyer and journalist Dino Papale, whose maternal grandfather was Cesare Acrosso (1898-1990) (Podesta of Taormina, nephew and heir of Salvatore Cacciola), who resides in the former Trevelyan palazzo in Via Teatro Greco, wrote a book published in 1995 called Taormina Segreta - La Belle Epoque 1876-1914, in which he claims that the young Florence was expelled by Queen Victoria from the English royal court and high-society, due to an affair she supposedly had with Prince Edward, the queen's eldest son and the future King Edward VII.
Life in Taormina, Sicily
Isola Bella
In 1890 she purchased the Isola Bella, a small rocky island below the town of Taormina, attached to the mainland by a narrow sandy path, on which she built a house and established a garden.
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