Charles Roach Smith - Later Years

Later Years

After his business dwindled, he purchased, as a place of retirement, the small property of Temple Place, on Cuxton Road, Strood, Kent, and some adjoining horticultural land. In 1864, he was involved in an action at law with the dean and chapter of Rochester over some reclaimed land adjoining his property, and Roach Smith won the case. The garden at Temple Place was in later life his chief recreation, and he enjoyed cultivation of its grounds. He especially applied himself to pomology as well as growing vines in open ground, making considerable quantities of wine from the grapes which he reared. His pamphlet On the Scarcity of Home-grown Fruits in Great Britain, which first appeared in the Proceedings of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire in 1863, passed into a second edition, and a thousand copies were distributed in France and Germany. He advocated the planting of the waste ground on the sides of railways with dwarf apple trees and with other kinds of fruit, and this suggestion was adopted to a considerable extent abroad and to a limited degree in England.

Roach Smith was unmarried, and a sister kept house for him at Temple Place. She died in 1874, and was buried in Frindsbury churchyard. After a confinement to his bed for six days, he died on 2 August 1890, and was buried in the same churchyard.