to draw the Speaker's Coach to State Openings of Parliament, a tradition maintained until Whitbread closed the Chiswell Street premises in 1976. He retained the post until he felt that his hearing was deteriorating, and retired in May 1857. Shaw Lefevre is the second-longest Speaker in the history of the Commons. Palmerston believed Shaw Lefevre to be 'the best who ever filled the chair.' Having no male heir, Shaw Lefevre negotiated a life peerage as Viscount Eversley and a pension of £4,000 per annum. Just as he was on the point of retirement, Shaw Lefevre was widowed; he survived his wife by thirty years. Two of their daughters married into the Mildmay family, Helena living at the nearby Dogmersfield estate; their eldest daughter, Emma Laura, did not marry and was chatelaine of Heckfield Place in her father's retirement. During these decades, Lord Eversley's chief pleasures were his gardens and his game. Lord Eversley's Head Gardener from 1865 was William Wildsmith (1837–1890). Wildsmith became one of the foremost men of his profession, leading the contemporary development of carpet bedding (for which the terrace at Heckfield Place was famous) from over-fussy floral patterns of annuals into looser, hardy, year-round planting. Wildsmith sat on fruit committees at Kew Gardens, wrote columns for contemporary journals and contributed a chapter on summer bedding to William Robinson's English Flower Garden. He also won for Heckfield Place a reputation as a top training ground for outstanding gardeners. At Heckfield Place, Wildsmith extended sub-tropical planting around the lower lake; the pinetum flourished in the native heathland soil, and included early sequoiadendron specimens; fifteen men tended the shrubberies; glass frames of every description enabled the unseasonal forcing of produce, for example of strawberries for the table in February; the walled gardens were legendary for fruit – for pears (the favourite fruit of Lord Eversley) and for grapes in particular. The grape room could preserve up to 2,000 bunches, enabling dessert grapes to be offered on the dining table every day of the year. The Heckfield Place garden was opened to the public, and in 1882 drew 2,000 visitors in five days. The Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener that year described it as 'a model garden both in design and execution. Surpassed by none and equalled by few.' Lord Eversley bought himself a new shotgun for his ninetieth birthday and the woods were developed to supply fine driven shooting.