Andrew Jameson has worked at Howick Hall for 36 years, while his dad and brother have also clocked up 40 years maintaining the gardens and forests of the ancestral home of Earl Grey
08:00, 14 Mar 2026
Andrew Jameson, deputy head gardener at Howick Hall.(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)
Northumberland’s historic houses and estates are steeped in tradition. Howick Hall is the ancestral home of Earl Grey Tea, named after the former Prime Minister atop Newcastle’s famous Monument.
But look behind the scenes and beyond the lords and ladies and you’ll find the people who make such sites tick. When Andrew Jameson Senior left East Lothian in 1961 for the role of head woodsman at Howick Hall, he thought he’d found the perfect job.
But he couldn’t have imagined that he and his two sons would both work on the estate for more than 35 years each, as well as countless other members of his family. Andrew retired in 1998 after 37 years, and died in July 2024.
His son, also called Andrew, now 64, has lived on the estate his whole life, and has worked as a gardener and arborist since 1989. Andrew’s older brother, Robert, 68, has now retired but he had more than 40 years service at the hall.
Andrew told ChronicleLive: “Our family, the Jameson family have been on the estate for a long time now. With my father being head forester, then my brother was head gardener for 40 years.
“I’ve been here as gardener and propagator, all the tree propagation and plant propagation for the garden and I’ve been here for 36 years. So in total, our family has been here for over 100 years.”
L-R: Robert Jameson, Andrew Jameson snr, Andrew Jameson jnr. The trio are planting an oak tree in the Howick Hall arboretum from an acorn collected on a field trip to Russia(Image: Andrew Jameson)
When Andrew junior started at the hall, there was no arboretum, which now attracts thousands of visitors each year. It’s the thing he’s most proud of working on in his time at Howick, estimating that he’s grown up to 85% of the roughly 11,000 trees there from seeds collected by Lord Howick.
He told ChronicleLive: “I have grown trees from collections Lord Howick started, he’d travelled to China, America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. 80 – 85% of the trees I have grown from a seed collected from other parts of the world, and I started that in 1989.”
And it’s not just the brothers who have got Howick Hall on their CVs. Andrew’s wife, Karen, has run the teashop in the hall, while Robert’s three sons all worked in forestry and gardening on the estates when they finished school.
Andrew says there’s nowhere else he’d rather have spent his working life. He finished: “The hall and the family mean a lot to us, they’re like our family.
“We don’t class them as employers, they’re our family. They’re a good family to work for and they have been here all our lives, and it’s been a great place to grow up.”
In 2026, Howick Hall has trialled allowing dogs in the garden and arboretum from Mondays to Wednesdays. For more information, visit the Howick Hall website.
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