P W Flower and Sons , merchants

Philip William Flower (1809-72) and his brother Horace (1818-99), sons of John Flower, a City of London merchant, established themselves as merchants in Sydney, Australia, in 1838, trading in connection with their father's City business. In 1842 they formed a Sydney partnership with Severin Kanute Salting (1805-65), a Dane who had invested the profits from his marine equipment business, established in Sydney in 1834, in sheep stations and sugar plantations. A further partnership was formed later with a related company in Melbourne. Philip William returned permanently to the City in about 1843 to run the London side of the business (called P . Flower and Company, 1845-72), which had a succession of offices moving from John Flower's premises at 62 Bread St to 29 Bucklersbury in 1845 and then to 4 Princes St in 1852, 6 Moorgate in 1863, and Swan House, Swan Alley in 1914.

The business was eventually run, from about 1934, from the Park Town estate office at 18 Queen's Square, Battersea. The company was involved in the shipping of wool and a wide variety of other merchandize to and from Australia and of coffee from Mysore, India; and in various other ventures including trade with South Africa. Investments were made in London property including wharfs; 2 office blocks built in the 1850s (Weavers' Hall, Basinghall Street and Danes Inn Chambers, off the Strand); Albert Mansions, Victoria Street, Westminster; and Park Town estate, Battersea (for which James Knowles the younger was the supervising architect). The property investments, particularly in the Park Town estate, are described in The Park Town Estate and the Battersea Tangle by Priscilla Metcalfe (London Topographical Society, no 121, 1978).

The Moorgate office was run by a series of confidential clerks who acted as managers, including James Gould, who died in June 1893, and his successor, Charles Potter. The Park Town estate managers were J. Melville Curtis 1878-1901, Charles Ernest Mayo Smith 1901-27, H. W. Eason, formerly office clerk at Moorgate, 1927-51, and C F Hatto, 1951-79. The estate was sold in 1979. In 1877 James Cooper was appointed agent and surveyor to the Flower estates and worked from an office in Albert Mansions. The company's solictors were Flower and Nussey of Great Winchester Street, whose Flower partners were descended from John Wickham Flower, one of Philip William's brothers.