History of Great Yarmouth and Gorleston-on-Sea

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William Ballard Cockrill

William Ballard Cockrill.

William Ballard Cockrill's parents' first born child, who was named also named William, had died some five years before William Ballard was born. His parents chose to re-use this long established Cockrill family name a second time, coupling it, as was the custom at the time with his mother's maiden surname.

W.B.' as he became widely known, trained as a builder and architect. He worked as a bricklayer within his father's firm whilst he studied architecture at Great Yarmouth School of Art. After qualifying he set up in private practice as an architect. He was responsible for many buildings or alterations to houses and shops in Gorleston and helped in various ways with the development of Gorleston.

• Buildings for which he is credited as the Architect or Developer include:
• The maltings for Watney, Combe, Reid and Company
• 'The Grange', Lowestoft Road (subsequently Gorleston Hospital)
• The Lowestoft Road Wesleyan Methodist Church (1899).
• House and Methodist Church Manse, Lowestoft Road
• Two houses, Bells New Road
• Alter and convert fish curing premises into cottages, Cliff Hill
• Two cottages, for Mrs Newman, Pier Plain
• Two houses, Clarence Road
• Five houses, Baker Street
• No 6 Marine Parade, Gorleston
• Several houses in the Cliff Park Estate
• Alterations to many High Street premises.

Exact identification of properties is difficult without reference to old deeds because the planning and committee details rarely give an exact location and would often be in the name of the owner where a private commission was concerned. Therefore only where the Cockrill firm itself was the developer are properties named. The planning applications also list, interestingly, one planning application refused: a temporary Post Office in Bells Road in March 1882.

J. W. Cockrill was the architect for the original Lowestoft Road Wesleyan Methodist Chapel (right 1866). When the Chapel became too small William B. Cockrill was commissioned as the architect for the new chapel (1899), which was more church looking and in stone. The original chapel became the Church Hall.

The Grange designed by W B Cockrill which subsequently became Gorleston Hospital.

In the mid 1870s, W.B. acquired the position of sub-postmaster for Gorleston. Although, strictly speaking, Gorleston was a sub-office of Great Yarmouth, W.B. Cockrill was always listed in directories as "Postmaster". As a sub-postmaster he would have been permitted to pursue his own occupation in addition to his Post Office work. Kelly's Directory of 1879 lists him as a Stationer and Postmaster. Had he actually been a Postmaster he would not have been able to sell stationery at the Post Office, nor be an architect and builder, a hotelier or a councillor. W.B. Cockrill retained the position of sub-postmaster at Gorleston for over 40 years, until 1917.

Gorleston Post Office 1898

In the very early 1880s he built the Post Office at the south end of the High Street. By the mid-1880s the Post Office would seem to have been known as Telegraph House and was used by W.B. as his business address. The building was subsequently used as a grocery shop by Beckett and Pitcher's. Today (2009) Hughes Electricals stands on this site, although it is not the same building. He also converted the two cottages next door to the Post Office into a double fronted house called 'Eastdene' where the family lived for some time. The planning application for this conversion was dated June 1878. For some years subsequently, W.B. Cockrill and family also lived at 'Glencoe House', in the High Street. It seems that he took this over from his brother, J W Cockrill in about 1883 and remained there until 1886. At the time he used this address for all the advertisements requesting tenders for building work. White's Directory of 1885 lists him in the High Street as Postmaster and Architect, House Agent and Agent for The Royal Farmer and General Insurance Company. It was also indicated that his private residence was still in the High Street, presumably 'Glencoe House', when the directory information was gathered.

William Ballard Cockrill and Staff outside Post Office Chambers

Back Row: Holmes, Harry Halfnight, Littlewood, Bly, Dowe, Arthur Halfnight, King, Brunning, Annison, Dye, Craness, Sudbury.

Seated: Miss Brown, Miss Stebbings, not identified, WB Cockrill, Miss Woods, Miss Holmes, Dye.

Telegraph Boys: 2 not identified, Billy Balls, 3 not identified.

In about 1886 W.B. moved from the High Street to 'Landsend', so called because it was, at that point in time, the last house at the south end of the Gorleston Cliffs. He made several alterations to 'Landsend' and added extensions in 1892 during which he utilised some old ships' timbers purchased at auction off the beach. In March 1895 a newspaper story cataloguing a list of damage to local buildings caused by a "Great Tornado" that had swept the coast reported that 'Landsend' had the ridge off the roof and the work-house had collapsed. At a later point in time, about 1897-98, 'Landsend' and 'Hill House' which was owned by E. P. Youell, were connected and developed to become part of 'The Cliff Hotel'. This may not have been its originally intended name because an application to the licensing authority made in December 1897 in the name of Mr W.B. Cockrill, whom Mr Youell had obviously not at that point in time bought-out, refers to it as the proposed 'Grand Hotel'. Amongst those with rooms there around 1892-93 was Dr Wilfred Grenfell, "Grenfell of Labrador", the first doctor to serve with the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.

As well as owning 'Landsend', W.B. also owned the cliffs below it right down to the beach. He kept guinea fowl and even a few turkeys on the cliffs.

However owning part of the beach brought concerns of its own.
In June of 1889 W.B. Cockrill raised with the Board of Trade the potential danger to his property caused by the removal of sand and shingle from the Beach. The Board's reply stated that since the building of the spur breakwater, completed around 1883, there had been such an accumulation of sand and shingle that there was no reason why it should not be taken.

In August 1889 he sent a notice to the bathing machine proprietor on Gorleston Beach as follows -
I hereby give you notice that as the proprietor of the shore at Gorleston above the high water mark, lying between two posts, marking north and south boundaries, I request you to pay me a rental to be agreed upon in respect of the standing of your bathing machines or tents thereon. In the event of your not coming to an agreement with me as to the standing of such machines or tents forthwith I shall cause the same to be removed without further notice.
Yours obediently, W.B. Cockrill.

The Press reported "that it was believed that Mr W.B. Cockrill had recently purchased some ground on the Cliff Park Estate parallel with this spot", they also asked "Who is Lord of the Manor?"

By December the dispute had reached the Town Council. There was a legal argument regarding the ownership of a portion of the Gorleston Beach that, twelve years previously, had been land (cliffs) which belonged to Mr Cockrill, but had been washed away by the sea and had become part of the beach below the cliffs. Mr Cockrill was offering to sell part of the beach for £100 plus a triangular piece of land at the top of the cliff for £50 in order to enable the Corporation to build a sea wall. Eventually the Town Council decided to buy the "soil of the beach" extending from the pier to the north boundary of the Cliff Park Estate, the portion of the cliff and the triangular piece of ground above the cliff, comprising 2 acres, 20 poles, belonging to Mr W.B. Cockrill and the slope of the cliff containing about half an acre and also a corner of Mr Cockrill's land at the entrance of the beach for £350. During the debate Mr W.B. Cockrill's title was questioned as it was being alleged that the Lord of the Manor was the owner of the beach as at Gunton where there had been a similar dispute. However, The Town Clerk stated that at Gorleston the Lord of the Manor did not own the foreshore.

W.B. did sell the cliffs to the Borough Council but he secured a contract to design and build the row of shops that were developed at the foot of the cliffs below the 'Cliff Hotel'. He also built a pair of houses on land that came up for development following the demolition, in 1887, of Beevor's Mill which stood very close to the site of 'The Poplars' Old People's Home, almost across the road from 'Landsend'. For a while he lived in the house which was named 'South Holm'. Herbert Douglas Cockrill recalls the family moving there when he was a little boy, so it may have been around 1897. It is not easy to positively identify this pair of houses as the firm of Wm Cockrill built a very large number of, if not all of, the houses in Springfield Road and some in Avondale Road between about 1881 and 1899. William Cockrill Snr was, by then, elderly and living at the North end of the High Street, whereas William Cockrill Jnr (ie W.B. Cockrill) was living at the South end of Gorleston, so it is quite probable that he was in fact the instigator and supervisor of all the work via his father's firm.

In July 1892 James Wolverton was offering:

Although Telegraph House was offered for sale, and hence yields this most interesting description, it must have either remained unsold or was bought back later because it continued to be used as Post Office chambers by W.B. Cockrill until about 1916 and intermittently occupied by the Cockrill family until 1922.

For many years W.B. Cockrill was a member of the Town Council, first elected in January 1903. He was also a prominent freemason and for a while he was the Worshipful Master of the St Andrew's Lodge. Evidence of his prominence in the town is indicated in the programme for a special service at Gorleston Parish Church held at 3.30 pm on Sunday 7 June 1903 for the new, voluntarily adopted, East Anglian Flag.

The programme states that:
" .......... after the National Anthem Councillor Mr W.B. Cockrill will hand the Flag to Mrs Brown Potter who has kindly consented to speak on the occasion of hoisting the East Anglian Flag." There was also a special voluntary "The East Anglian Flag" composed by a Miss Westgate to be played at the end of the ceremony. Nellie Cockrill, W.B.'s daughter, sang this on the occasion of the opening of the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome the following month.

About 1904 W.B. designed and built 'The Gables' Hotel with the intention of running it himself, which he did until 1915 with the assistance of his daughters Nellie and Edith who was a particularly good cook. The original building had a tennis court and a croquet pitch, on which Doug recalls sporting battles involving he and Ken, Don and Frank Cockrill and the Willament family, but these spaces were later sacrificed to allow extensions to be built.

The Gables Hotel is now a Residential Care Home for the Elderly (2009)

By 1915 Britain had been at war for a year, hoteliery business was down and W.B. Cockrill went bankrupt. The sale of the 'The Gables' Hotel enabled him to pay off his creditors at about 18/- to the £1. Bankruptcy also forced his resignation as Postmaster for Gorleston.

From the Gables he, his wife and Edith moved to The Farm in Long Lane, Bradwell, where he built the farmhouse, 'Gable Hurst' (demolished when the Magdalene Estate was developed in the 1980s: a cul-de-sac off Selwyn Avenue being named Gablehurst). Soon after moving there Caroline, his wife, became progressively more unwell and died on 15 December 1915. For a while, after bereavement, W.B. and his sister Edith were loaned Tom Cockrill's house, 55 Lowestoft Road, so as to be at least in town and by January 1916 the Farm, Bradwell, was being cleared preparatory to sale.

By June of 1916 W.B. was in London working as a draftsman with a firm of architects near the Elephant and Castle. For a while he was working with his son Gilbert with an office in Gray's Inn Square, W.C.1, and lodging at Finsbury Park, N4.

In December 1930, owing to deteriorating health W.B.moved to be with his son, Kenneth, at Burgh Castle, subsequently moving with the family to 'Spring-Fields' Farm, Bradwell, where he died in his seventy-ninth year. The obituary in the local press recorded that he was respected for his integrity, sound character and business ability.

Appendix

These are some notes extracted from the Post Master General's Minute books held in the Post Office Archives, Mount Pleasant, London. In all cases the full minutes and file have been cleared and only the summary reference remains. Although there are few references to names they do chart the progress of and incidents involving the sub post office at Gorleston.