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William Cobb, my 5 x Great Grand Uncle, was baptised in Northington, Hampshire c1719, the eldest son of William Cobb and Mary (nee Hewett). Descended from Hampshire gentry who had been established at Northington/Swarraton in the Candover Valley since the 15th century, William moved to Isleworth in Middlesex within 3 years of his marriage in 1742 at Elvetham, Hampshire to Jane Seward (their first child Jane was baptised at All Saints, Isleworth in 1745).
Though still in possession of land in Northington which he inherited from his father and which was to become the subject of a legal dispute after his death in 1798, William set up as a Market Gardener at Brentford End .
Brentford End was 1 mile south-west of Brentford, west of the river Brent, on the north side of the River Thames and 8 miles west of Hyde Park corner in London. The brick-earth soils of the area over well drained gravel beds had provided fertile land able to support a variety of crops for many generations and as London grew and expanded food needed to be grown closely enough to arrive fresh at the market and in the city.
By 1819 there were approximately 3,000 acres of market gardens in and around Brentford known as the fruit and vegetable garden of London. As the capital had expanded through the centuries more and more fresh food was required for the growing population. As the city extended westwards the market gardens closer to London were built over. This led to land around Brentford becoming intensively cultivated through the 18th and early 19th centuries. Low growing and soft fruits were grown underneath the fruit trees and fertilised with what was politely called 'night soil' and other refuse from London brought back in the carts and boats when they returned from their deliveries. This practise continued until early in the 20th century.
William's neighbours on his arrival at Brentford End included the Greening family, gardeners to the royalty, whose house and garden were identified on John Rocque's small map of the Environs of Syon House 1743, and the Duke of Somerset who owned the stately, but dilapidated, Syon House nearby.
William first appeared in the Isleworth Poor Rates in 1744, rental value £2/£3 in the Smallberry Green section, later subdivided with the Brentford End section, where he probably lived from the start. He was in the same place to 1754, and then in a different property, probably remaining there till his death in 1798, when succeeded by his son John Cobb, who left in 1800.
William's younger brother Hewett also moved from Hampshire at some stage and settled, across the Thames from William, at Richmond, Surrey. In 1771 Hewett was recorded as a tenant at Pesthouse Common, Richmond.
William and Jane had 4 children between 1745 and 1753 (all baptised at All Saints, Isleworth) before Jane's death in 1754. William married again in 1756 to Elizabeth Clark at St. Mary Magdalen, Richmond, with brother Hewett and his wife as witnesses. William's son William junior, by his first wife Jane, became William Windham's Steward at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk in 1777. William junior corresponded with his family at Brentford End and the letters he received are preserved at Norfolk Record Office. These letters to William, preserved in the Felbrigg archives, provide a wealth of information about everyday life in the late 18th century and the joys and tribulations of the Cobb family.
It was possibly at Brentford that the Cobb family's connection with the artist J M W Turner came about. From c1811 (possibly earlier), William's nephew Hewett Cobb junior was employed by Turner as his solicitor. Hewett's nephew, George Cobb, said in 1852 that he himself knew Turner "for forty years down to the time of his death but I had not seen him since 1837 but I heard from him as late as October 1840. I was his solicitor from 1822 up to 1837....My uncle whom I succeeded in business was his solicitor before me."(The National Archives, ref. PROB 37/1547). The connection between the Cobb and Turner families may have originated in the 1770's when Turner's maternal uncle William Marshall was a Butcher at Brentford and William Cobb was established with his family as a Market Gardener at nearby Brentford End. JMW was sent to stay with his uncle and aunt for a time in about 1785 and visited Brentford in later years.
In 1780 William was in London and, it seems, a witness to the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots - "Sad work in London...Destruction by Mobb...Newgate was burnt...and other noblemen's houses...and all the Romish chapels. I was in town those nights." The riots badly affected William's market garden trade - "We can hardly sell our goods at market".
William died in 1798 and was buried on 4th February. His wife Elizabeth predeceased him in 1792, as a result of a fever caught from William according to family papers, and was buried at All Saints, Isleworth.
After William's death, it was discovered by his son William junior that the property in Northington, Hampshire had apparently been sold illegally by his father to Robert Lord Henley in 1764. William junior disputed this sale on the basis that the property was subject to a special tail deed* in his favour which prevented its disposal. I have been unable to discover the outcome of this dispute.
* In English common law, fee tail or entail is a form of trust established by deed or settlement which restricts the sale or inheritance of an estate in real property and prevents the property from being sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the tenant-in-possession, and instead causes it to pass automatically by operation of law to an heir determined by the settlement deed. - Wikipedia
