6 November. Family Tree post #76.
Thirty years ago, I visited Rievaulx Abbey with Mandy Wheaver. The visit was made possible by Penny Lee and John, who had once taken me to see Robert the Bruce’s statue at Stirling Castle (which now graces the Clydesdale Bank £20 – suitably threatening, given the impending end of my fixed rate.)
On this occasion, we drove on past Bruce, up to Caithness – where the old Triumph broke a tie bar, so we had an unscheduled break while it was welded up. 13 years later, I was back in Caithness in the same car, accompanied by Hal Wheaver in the Stag… which also broke a tie bar and needed welding.
Anyway, 700 years ago, Robert the Bruce ravaged the land around Rievaulx, and Edward II beat a hasty retreat. The “Battle of Old Byland turned into a complete and bloody rout of the English.” If I knew this in 1993, I certainly did not know that three miles and 300 years away, the Cossins family had been at home. The generations had passed and in 1812 one descendant married my 4th Gt-Grandfather Squire (Penny’s 3rd GGF) via the nicely named Anne Kettlestrings and Thomas Smyfit.
About the same time, another descendant, a John Ewbank (“a plain matter-of-fact kind of a man of few words”) was denied renewal of the inherited tenancy on his Yorkshire farm, apparently partly because he was a dissenter – a methodist. He sailed to the US, and found employment as a farm manager in New York State, sending for his wife and large family a couple of years later. They moved to Dearborn County, Indiana where the next three generations were born. My DNA-confirmed sixth cousin x1R lives in San Diego, her father Wesley having moved there around the time of WWI.
A third sibling’s descendant, Thomas Cussons, moved to Hull, where his son was born in 1803. George became a printer and compositor. His son, Thomas Tomlinson Cussens trained as a chemist. He lived around the corner from Frederick Larard (post #32). Once qualified he opened a shop in Holbeck, and bought one in Louth. By 1893, he had his own brand of medicinal products, such as Cussons “Excelsior” Tic Mixture, and Black Currant Cough Elixir.
The family bought a farm in Kersal, Salford and then the adjoining bleach works, where they made glass bottles and soap. They bought perfumier Bayleys of Bond Street in 1921, and in 1938 used an Eau du Cologne – originally commissioned by Count Orlov – to scent a new soap. They advertised in breaks in the new TV dramas, which became known as soaps…
The family sold up in 1975. By this time, my cousins had found other interests: Richard was a methodist preacher; Hugh played in a jazz band at The Cavern; Simon was president of Man City (Phil Mellor). And Nick raced Aston Martins and Ford GT40s – he was Historic GT champion in 1992. [Update 2025: Nick died on 5 May this year. The BRDC obituary is here.]
The Kersal factory was knocked down in 2012, but Cussons are still big in Manchester, and Imperial Leather is still a brand to reckon with.