Cobbold ales & tales: 1723-2023 by Mary Attwood

The latest book from The Cobbold Family History Trust is written by family member Mary Attwood. A Chevallier descendent, she is an art historian with a special interest in how past ideas and people have shaped our present world.

She opens in the time of Chaucer and takes us through the first green shoots of two Thomases struggling with the most basic ingredient – water – to the prodigious growth of third generation John, now known as ‘Big John’, with very good reason, and on to John Wilkinson who broadened the business with well-aimed ventures into merchanting, shipping and banking. John Chevallier Cobbold pursued growth but was also a player at national level employing a little enlightened self-interest to bring the country’s biggest wet dock and the railway to Ipswich.

Tragedy struck with the early death of John Patteson Cobbold demanding the return to Ipswich of the academic Felix whose able handling of the banking interests provided much beneficial philanthropy. John Dupuis, the last member of the Cobbold family to occupy Holywells, married the most extraordinary of all the Cobbold wives, Lady Evelyn Murray, who outlived her husband and all her children and then converted to Islam, but not until her only son, who married into the aristocracy, had become tragedy victim number two being killed by a doodle-bug whilst at church on a Sunday morning in 1944.

The last of the Cobbolds, Mr John and Mr Patrick, as they were affectionately known to ‘Town’ football fans, presided over not only the optimism of the merger with that other stalwart local brewery run by the revered Tollemache family but also, sadly, the decline of the business at the hands of commercial giants. Fortunately, perhaps, they did not live to see the struggles leading up to the abandonment of The Cliff to silence, desolation, vandalism and finally arson.

The illustrated paperback costs £10 and was launched at Holywells Park on 24 June 2023 at the Cobbold 300 event and is available from ‘Books for Sale’on the website www.cobboldfht.com.

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