Grandfathers Memories

A Memory of Cobham.

My grandfather was born in Cobham on Painshill. My memory is that it was on a slight hill with a slight bend, the Greenline bus used to stop near the old home, it was a cottage with a porch and had a very thick door with big locks on it. I have a photo of my great-gran standing at the gate. My great-great-grandfather was a pit sawyer, in the 1881 cencus it has him as a lawyer, but I remember seeing the pit he use to work in and above sawing trees into lumber.
My grandfather (Daniel Seach Osborne) used to tell me stories of his brother Peter John Osborne who was a journeyman carpenter, he helped build a wooden flying machine, it flew a few feet then crashed, this was at Fox Warren, he had a barrow and a big tool chest he made with a picture of Queen Victoria on the inside and a cloths chest. He wheeled these around jobs over a big area. My grandfather had two sisters and he used to write poems and a story of a boy named Tim who was a very ill child, I believe it was a brother. Daniel was born of a second marriage, his mother I believe was the daughter of a Danish sea captain, they lived at Richmond.

My grandfather left Cobham in 1888, he was in service at a big house at Mymns Park near Brookman Park, I still have the buttons from his uniform. He learnt the trade of a boot maker and repaired for the gentry, he built the business up from scratch and obtained property in Potters Bar/Little Heath, ending up with three houses and one repair business, and my mother and aunt opened a shoe shop in the same block as the houses he died in the 1960s.

My wife and I were coming home from our holiday as my sister and I had been trying to remember where the cottage was, I think it's where the M25 goes under, I was very disapointed not finding it, I wish it had been a day later, it would have been ni e to see the Cobham Heritage Day.

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