The Redland Estates of John Cossins, and What Happened to Them
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Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 130 (2012), 225–240 The Redland Estates of John Cossins, and what happened to them by PETER MALPASS Today Redland is a residential suburb of Bristol, but historically (and until 1835) it lay just outside the city boundary. It was a rural corner of the parish of Westbury-on-Trym, tucked between the parishes of Clifton to the south west and Horfield to the north east. The 1841 tithe map shows a cluster of houses on the Redland side of Blackboy Hill, but house building was about begin, and by 1914 the patchwork of fields and nurseries had been replaced by the solidly middle class villas that continue to characterise the area.1 The grandest of the mansions that formerly dotted the Redland landscape have been demolished or converted to non-residential uses. The grandest of them all, Redland Court mansion, has been the home of Redland High School since 1885. Its 2.5 acre site is the remnant of an estate that was once much more extensive than previous accounts have acknowledged. Histories of Redland in the 18th century by Revd. H.J. Wilkins and Charlton and Milton have tended to focus on the acquisition of Redland Court and surrounding land by John Cossins in 1732, his subsequent investment in improvement in the 1730s and 1740s, and the dissipation of the assets by Jeremy Baker (nephew of Cossins’ wife Martha), who inherited the estate in 1778 and ran up such heavy debts that on his death in 1798 the house and land had to be sold.2 These accounts hardly even hint at two important facts, namely that after buying the Redland Court estate Cossins made further significant land purchases and that much of this land was not disposed of in the 1799 auction. Some of it was safe in a trust that Cossins had set up to provide an income for the Chapel that he built adjacent to Redland Green, and much of the rest remained in the family for another two generations. The first part of this article aims to clarify the location and extent of Cossins’ two distinct Redland estates, while the second part examines what subsequently happened to the estates under a succession of owners. Unsurprisingly there is much more documentary evidence for more recent developments and the methodology employed in relation to determining the land owned by John Cossins himself requires some explanation. A basic assumption is that those who inherited land once owned by Cossins were not in a position to add to it (for reasons that will become clear below), and so we can infer that when any land was disposed of by these people it was derived from the Cossins bequests. By comparing the available lists of properties owned by Cossins with later plans and deeds, and drawing inferences from the 1841 tithe map and apportionment we can work out where most of the land was. The task is made more difficult by the rather approximate measurement of land area in the 18th century and the way that some field names appear to change over time, while others are reconfigured. Some fields had no name, or were simply identified as, say, a close of five acres. Often location was indicated in property deeds by naming the owners 1. P. Malpass, Redland: the making of a Victorian suburb (Avon Local History and Archaeology, 2012). 2. H.J. Wilkins, Redland Chapel and Redland (Arrowsmith, 1924); J. Charlton and D. Milton, Redland, 791–1800 (Arrowsmith, 1951). 225-240 - Malpass.indd 225 19/02/2013 13:45 226 peter malpass of adjacent properties, a practice that worked better for contemporary readers than for modern researchers. John Cossins owned land and property in London and elsewhere, but this study focuses solely on the Redland estates, and draws most of its evidence from files held by the Bristol Record Office. Cossins and the Redland Court Estate Redland Manor (later Redland Court) had been acquired by a Bristol physician, Jeremy Martin in 1653. Charlton and Milton (p. 32) report that he purchased the house plus 42 acres, and although they provide the field names it is not possible to identify exactly where they all were (because some of the names differ from those on later plans).3 Martin also purchased two fields known as Kendall Meads (6 acres), which remained in the portfolio until the 1830s, as will be mentioned later. The Kendall Meads were located in Cotham (where St Matthews Road is today – see Fig. 4), but otherwise we can be confident that the estate consisted of land closer to and surrounding the house. As Charlton and Milton observe, the income from 48 acres was insufficient to maintain the lifestyle of a landed gentleman, and Jeremy Martin must have relied on his professional earnings. His heirs, particularly Gregory Martin who occupied the estate from 1711 until 1732, were more dependent on income from the land with the result was that mortgages were taken out as debts mounted. According to Charlton and Milton (pp. 36–7) Gregory Martin had effectively lost control of the estate before he conveyed it to John Cossins in 1732. They say that there is no record of any payment from Cossins to Martin and that Cossins took over the existing mortgages. John Cossins was a successful grocer, born in London in 1682 and he seems to have been wealthy enough by the age of 50 to retire to Bristol and to set himself up as a country gentleman, while simultaneously doing a favour for his wife’s family by taking on her uncle’s indebted estate. Given the significance of the slave trade and the exploitation of enslaved Africans for the Bristol economy in the 18th century, and the known propensity of successful West India merchants to convert their riches into real estate, it is necessary to ask how Cossins had acquired his wealth.4 It seems unlikely that he made his money simply by retailing packets of sugar and other comestibles, and he should probably be thought of as a merchant rather than a shopkeeper, but whether and how far he was engaged in the more reprehensible aspects of the West India trade is not known. Wilkins confidently asserted that unlike Edward Colston ‘There are no dark and hideous shadows on the reputation of John Cossins’.5 However, Dresser explicitly links Redland Court to the proceeds of slavery, and says that Cossins married ‘a wealthy West Indian heiress’ Martha Innys, daughter of Andrew Innys, a Bristol merchant.6 John Cossins certainly mixed with and made deals with people who were directly involved in either the trading of enslaved people to the West Indies or their exploitation on the plantations, but in the small social and economic elite of 18th-century Bristol such contacts were inevitable. Among his associates were Slade Baker and Paul Fisher, both known to have been directly involved in the slave trade.7 Baker, usually described as a linen draper, was 3. Culvermead (11 acres) Gastons (4 acres) Old Orchard (3 acres) Upper Hill (5 acres) Well Hay (3 acres) Little Brockridge (5 acres) Grove (2 acres) Lower Hill (5 acres) Linke (2 acres) and Linke Wood (2 acres). 4. M. Dresser, Slavery Obscured (Redcliffe Press, 2007). 5. Wilkins, Redland Chapel, p. 18. 6. Dresser, Slavery Obscured, p. 113. 7. A. Burnside and S. Brennan, ‘Paul Fisher: linen draper and merchant of Clifton Hill House’, in M. Crossley-Evans (ed.), ‘A Grand City’ – ‘Life Movement and Work’ Bristol in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 2010), p. 49. 225-240 - Malpass.indd 226 19/02/2013 13:45 The RedlaNd Estates of JohN CossiNs 227 married to Cossins’ wife’s niece Elizabeth, whose son Jeremy Baker eventually inherited Redland Court. Fisher, rich enough to have built Clifton Hill House, was also close to the Baker family and was appointed by Cossins to be a trustee of the Redland Chapel Trust. In addition, Cossins purchased a substantial tract of land in Redland from people known to have had connections in the West Indies, but none of this is sufficient to prove that he was himself involved with slavery. Soon after taking over at Redland Court Cossins demolished the Tudor manor house and built a new mansion, completed in 1735, in the fashionable Palladian style.8 It seems likely that it was Cossins who was responsible for the fine avenue of trees that still runs away from the house and which would have provided a fitting approach to the new mansion from the Bristol direction (see Fig. 6). The Cotham end of the avenue is hinted at on Rocque’s map of Bristol dated 1750, supporting the belief that Cossins was responsible for it. Maps published in the 1820s and 1830s indicate that the far end of the avenue was marked by a crenellated stone arch, in the field then known as the Arch Ground (now Archfield Road). This suggests that Cossins owned land all the way from the house to the Arch Ground, and this is supported by the fact that this field was owned by Catherine Baker in 1835 as part of a portfolio of property passed down from Cossins (see below). Fig. 1. Redland Court, painted in about 1824 by Edward Cashin. Reproduced with permission from Bristol Museums and Galleries, M3432. However, the Arch Ground was not part of the estate purchased in 1732. At that stage Cossins acquired only the mansion house and grounds, together with its surrounding 42 acres and Kendall Meads, all of which had belonged to Jeremy Martin.