Carlisle Street

 When I was in London I went to Carlisle Street to check out #19, the house where Sarah, Mary Anne and Charity Cockram were living in 1851. The house is now an Irish pub, a tiny place with low ceilings and signs outside warning patrons not to bother the surrounding businesses when they spill out onto the street. The area around Soho Square, off which Carlisle Street runs, is mostly home to media companies. The pub is called The Toucan (not very Irish) and has been there since 1993. It's clearly the original house though. Aound the corner in Soho Square at # 6/7/8 used to be the Soho Bazaar. As Sarah and her sister were dressmakers, I can imagine that they may have had a stall at the bazaar, selling gloves and handkerchiefs, but I don't know for sure.

On Dean Street, which crosses Carlisle Street a few doors down from the Toucan, is another pub named for Karl Marx, who was living there in 1851. Considering that the easiest route to the reading room at the British Museum was along Carlisle Street, I'm sure the Cockram family saw Marx frequently.

Getting to know the Cockrams

we left Stockleigh Pomeroy and Cheriton Fitzpaine yesterday after four nights staying at a 14th century pub. I learned so much it's hard to believe. First, in the churchyard at Cheriton Fitzpaine, right next to the pub, the headstones of Richard and Robert Melhuish. then, in the graveyard at the church in Stockleigh Pomeroy, the headstone for James and Charity Cockram, with dates of death. I had wanted to know when the family left SP and whether or not Charity came back. Here was proof. James died in 1848, so they left after that (in the London census for 1851). Charity died back in Sp, but a church record of payments to the hard up (not paupers) showed her getting 2/6 in 1855 . We went in to Exeter to check the Devon Records Office and find James' father's will. Anthony Cockram wrote his will in early 1817 and died two days later. He left ten pounds to his son John, twenty pounds to his daughter Sarah, and all his goods and chattels to his son James. Anthony was a miller and his residence was described as Stockleigh Mill. We had seen the farm at Westwood, but now realize that what is there now is Upper Westwood, where his sister Sarah and her husband Phillip Yeandell farmed. Right next to that farm is a house with millstones in front, and I believe that to be Lowre Westwood. Anthony also left money to his granddaughter Betty, and she was the illegitimate daughter of Sarah---quite common in those days according to the records we looked at.

On the final day I went to take a look inside the church at CP early in the morning, and met the Vicar Stephen Smith. He told me that there were still records at the church in SP and offered to show them to me. We met him at the church and he took us into the vestry where a continuous death record has been kept in one book since the early 1800s. We saw many of the family in there, starting with Anthony, and it's clear that my family has deep roots in Stockleigh Pomeroy. Before we left I put a small bunch of lavender on the grave of James and Charity. my family!