Cottle - From Somerset to Wales to Durham

COTTLE FAMILY

The Cottle family have a long history in the Bath area of Somerset stretching back to the 13th century. Most specifically they were based in the locality of Camerton, and associated towns, Radnor, Dunkerton and Midsomer Norton.

The branch of the family that is most relevant to us were involved with the coal-mining industry in Camerton and Dunkerton. These areas flourished in the first small-scale coal mining of the Industrial Revolution. However, by the mid-1800’s, more productive fields had developed elsewhere.

The farthest back that we go in our line of Cottles is Giles Cottle born in the mid-1600s in Radstock, Somerset.

The more detailed records begin with the birth of James Cottle in 1778. He was a coal miner. He married Harriet Flower in 1819 and they had three children. The first, James, was born in 1820 and died later that year. The second was Harriet Flower Cottle that was born in 1824 followed by another James, born in 1826. In 1829, James senior died, and Harriet remarried in the following year to a James Sims and the children went to live in this new household at Mt Pleasant. Eventually James junior entered the mining profession like his late father. By 1848, James had developed an attachment to Mary Ann Hill Lippiat and she had a son born in April 1848, called William James. They married in December of that year and then proceeded to have a large family that finally numbered eleven children. The 1851 census (as do the censuses of 1861, 1871 & 1881) shows them living at Cornhill Cottages, Clandown, in the parish of Midsomer Norton.

In the 1860’s, William James left for the coalfields at Llanhilleth in Wales where he married Elizabeth Richardson (pictured below) in 1868. They had seven children. The family moved to Willington in Co. Durham in the early 1870’s. The early children were born in Co. Durham, some of the middle children were born in Camerton and surrounding areas and the last child, Lily Cottle was born at Oakenshaw in Co.Durham in 1892. William and Elizabeth both ended their days in Willington during the First World War.

The above below shows Watling Terrace in Willington with the house third from the right being the Cottle residence.

In the early 1890’s Frederick Cottle, her older brother, went out to Australia to retrieve a sick uncle, Frederick Richardson, that had emigrated in 1884 to Portland in Victoria. Below can be seen the ship's register for their return voyage together.

In 1920, Frederick, Eliza and Lily permanently moved to Australia sailing on the White Star Line’s R.M.S. Zealandic. Frederick was already married with two children when he left England for good, Eliza never married and Lily Cottle was recently married to William Charles Henry Ecclestone.

Lily Cottle had been previously married to a John Wall and had a son from this marriage who accompanied them all to Australia. Lily had met William Ecclestone when he was recuperating from wounds, gassing and shellshock as a result of his fighting for Australia on the Western Front during the war. After the war, he had gone to work on Tyneside as a carpenter involved in refitting troopships for post-war use as liners. They were married at South Shields in 1919.

Frederick died in 1938, Eliza in 1958 and Lily in 1970.

• CONTACT DETAILS: - cecclestone@gmail.com