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side of Blackboy Hill, but house building was about begin, and by 1914 the patchwork of fields and nurseries had been replaced by the solidly middle class villas that continue to characterise the area.1 The grandest of the mansions that formerly dotted the Redland landscape have been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).

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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.

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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).

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. We can also say that he added to the estate, because 78 acres (including the house and grounds) were put up for auction in 1799.9 Moreover,

8. W. Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol (Faber and Faber, 1952), p. 164.9. Charlton and Milton, Redland, p. 55.

Fig. 1. Redland Court, painted in about 1824 by Edward Cashin. Reproduced with permission from Bristol Museums and Galleries, M3432.

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we know that the neither Kendall Meads nor the Arch Ground were included in the 1799 sale, nor were the two adjacent fields (317 and 318 on the 1841 tithe map) that were also inherited by Catherine Baker as an infant in 1817. These three fields amounted to 19 acres, and they may be the purchase referred to by Charlton and Milton (p. 43) who say Cossins bought ‘Green Ground’ in 1740. Whenever the additional land was purchased, we can conclude that overall John Cossins added at least 38 acres to the Redland Court estate. Indeed, he must have purchased a lot more land because in 1749 he was able to put 40 acres into a trust to provide an income for the chapel that he had recently built on land adjacent to Redland Green.

John Cossins’s Other Redland Estate

The chapel trust land was part of a major land purchase in 1738, when Cossins paid £2,200 for at least 58 acres, plus eight small houses, all in the Redland area.10 The background was that in June 1735 John Maycock, a Barbadian estate owner, had mortgaged the property (including some property at Lawford’s Gate, Bristol) for £4,000 but had been unable to redeem the mortgage and in March 1738 it was agreed that his creditors, Samuel Perry and Coort Kneirt, should sell it for what they could get.

Although we have a list of the fields and houses purchased by Cossins in 1738 and we can be reasonably confident of the location of his second Redland estate is difficult to be precise about each individual site. The easiest part concerns the land identified on the plan below, which shows the extent of the land placed in the Redland Chapel Trust by Cossins in 1749.11 Several of the fields named on the plan appear in the list of 1738 and it seems likely that all of the land given to support the chapel was derived from that purchase.

Rather than trying to identify each of the 58 acres, an alternative approach is to locate the various parcels of land that can be definitely or inferentially attributed to John Cossins. This approach is both less frustrating and more interesting, in the sense that it reveals his ownership of yet more land. First, a conveyance of Dec. 1767 by John Innys to Philip West (mason) refers to 5 acres known as Mine Ground, fronting onto what is today Redland Hill (part of the site is now the Redland Steiner School).12 The deed clearly states that this land was part of Cossins’ 1738 purchase. Innys, who had inherited the Redland Court estate, did not sell this site for an up-front capital sum; rather, in a deal that prefigured what was to become the norm in the 19th-century development of residential suburbs in Bristol, he agreed to transfer the land in return for ‘a yearly fee farm rent’ of £20 forever. For his part Philip West agreed to expend at least £2,400 to build

10. This section is largely based in one file in the B[ristol] R[ecord] O[ffice] 39113/11, deeds of 91 Hampton Road. The file includes an abstract of Benjamin Stickland’s title to land in Redland, enabling us to trace its ownership back to the early 1730s. The list of the property bought by Cossins is: an orchard, where a mansion house had stood, plus a close of 3 acres, Long Meadow (5 acres), The Brow (3 acres), Twenty Acres (10 acres), Curtis Hall (5 acres) and Hill Leaze (5 acres), all of which was in the possession of James Farnam. Then 6 paddocks (10 acres), Great Grove (6 acres, 3 roods (a rood was a quarter of an acre)) Close of meadow (2 acres 2 roods), Close of meadow known as Long Ground (5 acres 1 rood) adjoining Greenway, close of meadow near Greenway (3 acres 2 roods), 1 tenement (2 roods), one other tenement and small garden, one tenement, backside and orchard, known as the Bull’s Head, one small tenement and little garden, one house and garden, one old decayed tenement, backside and garden and one tenement. All these properties were ‘formerly the inheritance of Sir Robert Yeamans’.

11. BRO P/RG/T/1. 12. BRO 8015/78; see also W. Evans, ‘Redland Hill House and Redland Chapel, Bristol’, Trans. BGAS, 118

(2000), pp. 206–12.

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3 or more ‘good and substantial’ houses. However, like many optimistic builders and property developers West was under-capitalised and went bankrupt in 1770.13

Second, in 1768 John Innys disposed of another, larger, area of land, also part of the 1738 purchase and again the recipient was Philip West.14 This site included a house known as Cornish Mount, plus Cornish Mount Close (3 acres) and Great Grove (8 acres). Cornish Mount was an old

13. ibid..14. BRO 8015/79.

Fig. 2. Redland Chapel Trust Land.

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house, later rebuilt and renamed Grove House, on what is today Grove Road, off Black Boy Hill, but then it was identified as ‘being at or near a place called the Limekilns’. It is clear that Innys was seeking to increase the income from his land, for the rent charge was set at £42 p.a. and West was required to repair, alter or improve the existing house and to build one or more good and substantial new houses. It is highly probable that Cornish Mount Close was the field behind the house (396), and that Great Grove was the field on the south side of Lower Redland Road (264). The grounds for this inference are that the sizes of these fields according to the 1841 tithe map are congruent with the areas mentioned in the deeds and they both abut other plots associated with John Cossins.

Third, the 1841 tithe apportionment indicates that a total of 22 acres belonged to ‘William Henry Warton and Catherine Innys (his wife)’.15 In fact Mrs Warton was born Catherine Jane Baker, and as a toddler in 1817 she had inherited what remained of John Cossins’s land, including Kendall Meads in Cotham and 16 acres of Redland. The largest part of this holding consisted of three fields known as Greenway, Middle Greenway and Further Greenway (267, 268 and 271) on the western side of Hampton Road/Elgin Park, plus a smaller piece of pasture (272). In addition there were 3 plots in the angle between Redland Road and Redland Hill (386–8) and a small site on the corner of Lower Redland Road and Binden Place (a short stretch of Blackboy Hill). The deeds for the sale of fields 268, 271 and 272 in 1842 confirmed that they had been part of Cossins’s 1738 acquisition, and it seems probable that the other sites were also included, given their contiguity with other sites known or very likely to have been part of that deal.

Thus we can say that 58 acres understates the extent of the 1738 purchase, because we can tie at least 72 acres to it:

Redland Chapel land 40 acres Mine Ground 5 acres Cornish Mount 11 acres Greenway etc 16 acres.

Additionally we know that Catherine Baker inherited a total of 19 acres at Arch Ground that almost certainly derived from John Cossins. The total amount of land in Redland owned by Cossins therefore appears to have been 169 acres (72 in the 1738 deal +19 at Arch ground +78 in the Redland Court estate), not forgetting the 6 acres of Kendall Meads. This is a minimum estimate and does not include several houses for which we have no land area, nor a 1 acre field known as Tea Boat (of unknown location) and land on the Durdham Down (north) side of Redland Hill which is believed to have been owned by Cossins.16 If it is true that his initial purchase was the old mansion house plus just 42 acres then it is clear that Cossins more than tripled the size of his holding in the area, and that he was by far the largest land owner in Redland in the 18th century.

What Happened Next

John and Martha Cossins had no children and when he died in 1759 he left all his Redland property to his wife. Martha specified in her will that the Redland Court estate should pass first to her brother Jeremy Innys for his lifetime, then to her other brother John, and next to Jeremy

15. BRO EP/A/32/41 Westbury-on-Trym and Stoke Bishop Tithe apportionment, 1842, to be read with the tithe map, drawn up by Y. and J.P. Sturge, 1841.

16. This is based on recollections of the deeds of the old Redland College site, which have gone missing since the site was sold for housing.

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Baker, the son of Slade Baker.17 The estate was described as the land bought by John Cossins from Gregory Martin, excluding Kendall Meads, but including unspecified other land. Kendall Meads, plus some other unspecified property was to go to John Innys, and it is tempting to infer that the

17. BRO 8015/12 copy of the will of Martha Cossins, 24 Sept. 1761.

Fig. 3. Redland Land Owned by John Cossins.

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family saw the Redland patrimony in terms of two distinct parts. Jeremy Innys died in 1764 and so the two parts were reunited under his brother John. As we have seen, in the late 1760s he disposed of 16 acres of land and property off Redland Hill and Grove Road but the estate as a whole was still largely intact at his death in 1778. The will of John Innys, made in August 1775, left all his Redland property to Jeremy Baker, the son of his deceased niece Elizabeth Baker.18

Like his father, Jeremy Baker was a linen draper and partner in the Miles Bank (1786–98); he was also a Tory member of the Common Council. However, he appears to have been unable to keep his expenditure in line with his income and his death, in 1798, revealed that he had borrowed heavily against the value of the property. The outstanding debts precipitated a crisis in the family’s fortunes. Baker’s will left all his property in trust for his son, Jeremy Innys Baker. The trustees were Revd. Reginald Pyndar Baker, Revd. Slade Baker and John Vaughan (a banker), and these three together with Baker’s widow, Katharina, and his heir were unable to resolve the imbalance between assets and liabilities. The case went to the Chancery Court of Rolls in 1799, where Master Wilmot ruled that the mansion and surrounding land must be sold.19 This broke a family connection that went back nearly 150 years, but at least a significant amount of land and property remained under the control of the three trustees.

The house and about 75 acres were put up for auction in 4 lots at the Bath Tavern Bristol on 15 June 1799.20 Lot I was the mansion and grounds plus the land on both sides and in front, amounting to about 43 acres, which Charlton and Milton describe as being formerly the estate of William Martin. Lots II and III were the 31 acres to the north of the mansion, and lot IV was an occupied house and 6 acres of land (which had been leased to Jeremy Innys by John Cossins in 1741. The lease was inherited by his grandson Revd. William Baker and the house was then occupied by his brother Slade Baker, who bought the property at the 1799 auction). According to Charlton and Milton (who regrettably failed to provide references) lot I was sold for £9,200, lot II for £1,650, lot III for £1,200 and lot IV for £700. They do not name the purchaser or purchasers, apart from lot IV. Wilkins, however, implies that the whole estate was sold to Henry Seymour for £9,200 and it is probable that Seymour bought lots I to III.21 His son later sold out to Richard Vaughan in Aug. 1811 for £13,000.22

We know from a plan drawn up by Y. Sturge for the new owner in 1811 that the estate’s integrity had been maintained.23 Indeed, it had been enhanced because this plan includes three fields not mentioned in the list of fields sold in 1799. These three fields, on either side of Redland Road, amounted to 12.5 acres, and according to Charlon and Milton, Richard Vaughan bought Clotts Meadow (shown as Clotts Paddock on the 1811 plan) in 1809, ie. before he owned the estate, and then later purchased Fennel Close and Clotts Hill, taking the estate as far as Cotham Road (now Cotham Brow).24 The Vaughans were a prominent family in Bristol, with John Vaughan being credited by Cave as the father of banking in the city.25 Richard Vaughan senior (d. 1811), who lived at Oldbury House, St Michael’s Hill, was a wholesale linen draper and partner in the Miles

18. BRO 8015/6, extract from the will of John Innys.19. Charlton and Milton, Redland, p. 54.20. ibid., p. 55.21. Charlton and Milton do not mention Seymour at all but there is certainly corroboration of Seymour’s

involvement. BRO 8015/45 makes reference to a document headed ‘Seymour to J. Baker dec’d covenant for production of title deeds’, no date.

22. Wilkins, Redland Chapel and Redland. 23. The original of the plan is held by Redland High school, but a copy appears in the book by Charlton and

Milton.24. Charlton and Milton, Redland, p. 56.25. C. Cave, A History of Banking in Bristol 1750–1899 (privately published).

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Bank. Richard junior took over his father’s partnership in the bank in 1811, the same year that he acquired Redland Court. He was mayor of Bristol in 1806, was knighted in 1815 and served as alderman for St James ward until 1829. In addition to the bank he was in business with Charles Vaughan, as ‘Spanish and German wool merchants’, based in St Stephen’s Street, and he was in partnership with the Harford family in their brass business. According to Wilkins, Vaughan was brought down by a building speculation in Tyndall’s Park, but the Tyndall’s Park scheme failed in the 1790s and so if a Richard Vaughan was made bankrupt by it then it would have been Sir Richard’s father.26

Meanwhile, the land and property that had not been auctioned in 1799 remained in trust for the descendants of Jeremy Baker. The 1807 will of Jeremy Innys Baker left all his Redland property to his uncle Revd. Slade Baker and Reginald Baker, as trustees for his brother, William Pyndar Baker.27 William Baker turned out to be someone who needed trustees to save him from himself. In 1813 he was serving in the army in India when his daughter, Catherine Jane Baker was born. At that time he was deeply in debt and had ‘conveyed his interest’ (ie his right to the income) in his Redland property (although, fortunately, he could not dispose of the assets). In late 1816 he set sail for England but in March 1817 he was drowned off Weymouth, along with all aboard. His untimely death meant that his infant daughter was ‘entitled as Tenant in tail to the possession of certain estates devised by the will of her uncle Jeremy Innys Baker’, with an annual value of £406 13s.. The child was brought to England and placed with a guardian (although her mother later took over again), and as soon as she came of age in 1834 Miss Baker quickly claimed her inheritance in full. Reference has already been made to Catherine Baker’s holding, but to summarise she owned 16 acres, mainly consisting of 4 fields adjacent to Hampton Road/Elgin Park, and 19 acres in the

26. Wilkins, Redland Chapel and Redland. no source is given to substantiate this claim.27. BRO 39113/11.

Fig. 4. The Redland Court Estate in 1811.

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Archfield area, plus the 6 acres of Kendall Meads. In addition she was able to draw the annual rent charge on the Cornish Mount land and buildings.28

In 1835 Baker began to dispose of her estate, selling first the Archfield, followed the next year by her other two fields in that area, and then (at an unknown date) the field known as Greenway (field 267). In 1839 she married William Henry Warton, a London lawyer. In 1842 she sold the other three fields in the Greenway area, and I think we can infer that the remaining smaller sites were also sold at about this time.29 Baker seems to have been interested in realising the capital value of her estate, rather than its revenue value. She may simply have wanted to sever her links with a city in which she had no personal connection. Whatever the real explanation, she disposed of her land before the development of Redland as a residential suburb and thereby missed out on the profits to be derived from house building. In the event those development profits went to the people who bought Baker’s land and who were responsible for launching house building in the area. People such as Benjamin Stickland who in 1842 paid Baker £2,010 for 9 acres (fields 268, 271 and 272) were later to dispose of plots for house building. Almost invariably they conveyed plots to builders not for an up-front capital sum but in return for a binding commitment on subsequent owners to pay an annual rent charge in perpetuity.

Expansion of the Redland Court Estate under J.E. Baillie

Charles Vaughan mortgaged Redland Court in 1823 in partial security for loans amounting to £51,000 but by May 1829 he was in default and his creditors moved against him. The result was that the estate was taken into possession by the Old Bank, and was subsequently acquired by James Evan Baillie from his partners, for £25,000. However, Baillie did not live at Redland Court, nor anywhere in Bristol, consistently giving his address as Seymour Place, Mayfair, London, despite having continuing business interests here. Throughout most of the subsequent period up to 1854 the house was occupied by William Edwards, one of Baillie’s banking partners.30

J.E. Baillie, like his father, served as a Whig MP for Bristol (1830–5). He was part of the family firm, Evan Baillie, Sons and Co, based in Corn Street as well as being a partner in the Old Bank until his death in 1863. Baillie’s absence from Redland did not reflect a lack of interest, and over the years he added several parcels of land to the estate. He was probably looking for things to spend money on, having acquired a share in one of the largest payouts from the slave owners’ compensation fund in 1834.31 Thus whatever doubt there may be about the connections between the Redland Court estate and slavery in the 18th century, there is absolutely no doubt about the Baillie family’s deep involvement.

First, in 1835–6 Baillie bought from Catherine Baker her 3 fields (19 acres) including the Arch Grounds and the two adjacent fields going in the direction of Redland (these three fields are numbered 316, 317 and 318 respectively on the 1841 tithe map).32 Then at some date before 1841

28. ibid..29. ibid..30. Three generations of the Edwards family were partners in the Old Bank from 1815 right through to the

end of the century (Cave, 1899).31. n. Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the

End of Slavery (Cambridge University Press, 2009).32. BRO 39113/11 abstract of title of B. Stickland to 3 closes of ground at Redland, with the deeds for

91 Hampton Road; BRO 6682/31/b, conveyance of premises at Redland known by the name of the Archfield, 29 July 1835. Baillie paid Baker £2,625 for 7 acres. These deeds give Baker’s address as Finsbury Square, Middlesex.

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he bought the 38 acres of Coldharbour Farm, on the northern edge of the estate (fields 499 and 501–507). By 1841 the Redland Court estate amounted to 166 acres, and was more than four times as large as any other holding in Redland.33 In 1851 Baillie bought a 10 acre field in Westbury Park called Gregory’s Leaze (field 515). This was not contiguous with the estate and was not retained in the long term, but it helped the estate to reach its maximum 19th-century extent, a little larger

33. BRO EP/P/32/41 Westbury on Trym and Stoke Bishop Tithe Apportionment 1842.

Fig. 5. The growth of the estate in the 19th century.

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than John Cossins’s total Redland holding. Finally, in 1853 he purchased a field from Sir Thomas Fremantle (343) and then or later acquired the fields either side of it (322 and 344), about 15 acres altogether.34

There is evidence that Baillie made an attempt to develop at least some of his land for houses, for a deed dated August 1854 indicates that he sold three plots on the newly laid out road that was to become Archfield Road.35 The fact that these plots were numbered 17, 18 and 19 indicates something of the scale of the planned development, but subsequent cartographic evidence suggests that only two houses were built on that side of Archfield Road by the 1880s.36

Disposal and Development

On Baillie’s death in 1863 and his executors sold the house ‘together with the shrubberies pleasure grounds orchards stables coachhouse poultry yards millhouses gardeners houses and premises thereunto belonging’.37 Altogether the house and grounds amounted to about 11 acres and the total, including the farm land, was 91 acres, and the agreed price was £25,730.38 The purchaser was George Oldham Edwards, the son of William Edwards, the former tenant of the Court. The trustees also put up for auction some 34 acres of the estate. This was not, as has been suggested, because Baillie’s finances were in trouble, but to raise a £50,000 bequest to his nephew, Evan Baillie.39 Two plans drawn up by Sturge and Sons in 1864 are helpful in understanding how this part of the estate was converted to residential use.40 The land to be sold was divided into 8 lots. Lots 1 to 3 occupied the land between Cotham Road (now Cotham Brow), Redland Road, new Road (Zetland Road) and Cheltenham Road. Zetland Road was built on this recently acquired land, and the land to the north was retained as part of the estate. The Archfield was sold to William Coates, a successful local builder, and the other two fields bought from Catherine Baker were sold to F. and R. Fry, who lived nearby in Cotham.

It seems that the trustees were being quite strategic in their decisions about which parcels of land to sell, selecting to dispose of land furthest from the mansion itself, land that had been acquired in the relatively recent past. This included the land in the Cotham direction, with obvious development potential, but also Coldharbour Farm, to the north, still some way from attracting house building. The farm was sold to Joseph Dodge Weston, a local merchant and shipping magnate, who later became mayor of Bristol and twice an MP.

George Edwards lived at Redland Court until his death in 1883, apparently resisting any temptation to exploit development opportunities. As a successful banker, like his father a partner in the Old Bank, he was able to maintain an opulent lifestyle without breaking up his estate any further. The 1871 census records the Edwards household as including two parents and two children, plus a governess, butler and 4 other servants. Meanwhile, house building was proceeding in areas adjacent to the estate, not only in Redland but also Cotham and St Andrews. By the early

34. BRO 6682/39 handwritten note by Mr Burrell concerning the Edwards purchase of Redland court, mentions the date of 1853 for Baillie’s purchase of Fremantle’s field.

35. BRO 6682/33 conveyance of three plots by Baillie to W.H. Somerton for £904 14s..36. This is based on the 1880s OS map, see www.maps.bristol.gov.uk/knowyourplace. 37. Abstract of title of James Dole to Redland Court, viewed with the Redland High School deeds held by

HSBC, College Green, Bristol.38. ibid..39. Redland High School 1882–1982 (published by the Council of the school, 1982); BRO 6682(40) ‘Settlement

of the Estate of the late James Evan Baillie esq’, 16 April 1866. 40. BRO 37959(29) Sturge’s plans of Redland land for sale, 1864.

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1880s there were houses all along the Redland Road and Zetland Road boundaries of the estate and the Redland Court land must have been increasingly attractive to developers.41

The death of George Edwards precipitated major changes. He was succeeded by his son William Herbert Greville Edwards, who soon decided to move to the more rural setting of Butcombe Court, Somerset.42 According to some sources the estate was put up for sale in two lots in 1883, one lot being the house and gardens and the other lot being the rest, which was clearly for building.43 But this is not quite accurate, for G.O. Edwards had left the bulk of his estate to his son. However, in Dec. 1883 the trustees of Edwards’ will sold the house and grounds to James Dole, a provisions merchant of West Street, Bedminster. He paid £12,250 for a little less than 11 acres, including the mansion houses and immediate grounds, plus the field known as the Gastons. He then sold the house and some of the gardens (2.5 acres in total) to Redland High School in Feb. 1885, for £5,500. This was the sixth, and last, change of ownership of the house in less than 100

41. BRO 41826/1–12, deeds for 31 Carnarvon Road, Redland.42. A. Bantock, The Last Smyths of Ashton Court, pts. I and II (1990) recounts the story of how Mrs Edwards

had conducted a 27 year affair with her cousin, Greville Smyth, and implies that he was the father of her children.

43. Redland High School 1882–1982, pp. 8–9.

Fig. 6. Plan of the Land Acquired by George Oldam Edwards in 1863.41

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years. Dole retained the remainder of the land for building development, including the Clarendon Road and Woodstock Road areas.

Fig. 7. Land purchased by James Dole in 1883.

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44William Edwards retained the rest of the estate, some 78 acres, and raised a mortgage on it for £20,000 in Dec. 1883, quite possibly to pay for his move to the country. The area lying between Redland Road and Cranbrook Road was all owned by Edwards and this area was clearly ripe for development and the first houses were built in 1885, on Cranbrook Road. Edwards must have commissioned a general plan of the roads and plots, but thereafter it was left to individual builders to come forward with plans, usually for two or three at a time, to minimise their risk. The general pattern of development was that the first plots to be released were closest to Zetland Road, although at least one house was being built on Carnarvon Road in 1890,45 and the builders worked their way up the hill, not quite completing the estate before the hiatus caused by the Great War.

44. BRO 41826/1–12, deeds for 31 Carnarvon Road, Redland.45. ibid.. This bundle includes a useful abstract of title from 1864, with two very helpful plans of the estate

bought by G.O. Edwards and the smaller area inherited by his son.

Fig. 8. The Edwards Estate in 1883.

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Conclusion

The various grocers, linen drapers and bankers who owned Redland Court over a period of 150 years were actively involved in buying and selling land. The extent of the land acquired by John Cossins, which has been barely hinted at in previous accounts, has been set out in some detail, drawing attention to the significant portfolio of property saved for the family after the financial crisis precipitated by Jeremy Baker’s death in 1798. Cossins and James Evan Baillie were responsible for nearly all of the increase in land associated with Redland Court, and it is perhaps ironic that these two estate builders were not dependent on the income from their land, while other owners who depended more on the value of their land who were more likely to sell it. It seems reasonable to draw a distinction between the disposals in the 18th century (and 1829) and those of the period after 1834. Earlier sales were due to financial difficulties whereas we can see Catherine Baker, the trustees of James Evan Baillie and W.H.G. Edwards as making strategic decisions about their investments.

In the case of Cossins it remains an open question as to the source of his wealth and the extent (if any) to which he was repatriating gains derived from the enslavement of African men, women and children in the Caribbean. Baillie, however, was undoubtedly a major beneficiary from the exploitation of enslaved labourers, and his Redland investment may be seen as a way of converting his wealth into a more socially acceptable form.

A final point is that the way the Cossins land was packaged had a lasting impact on the pattern of housing development in Redland, in the sense that Catherine Baker’s inheritance was released first, in the 1840s, the land around the mansion remained undeveloped until the 1880s and 1890s, and the Chapel Trust, taking a truly long term view, did not dispose of any of its land until 1900.

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