Edward Cockey (1781–1860) was an industrial entrepreneur in Frome, Somerset, England, descended from a local family of metalworkers.
Background
The early part of the nineteenth century was a hard time for Frome, industry declining over the years as its dependence on the wool trade fell. In 1826 William Cobbett commented on what he found during one of his Rural Rides in his Political Register: These poor creatures at Frome have pawned all their things, or nearly all. All their best clothes, their blankets and sheets, their looms; any little piece of furniture that they had…….all the tolerably good clothes their children had….though this is a sort of manufacture cannot come to a complete end; still it has received a blow from which it cannot possibly recover.
In this situation, any new employment prospect was welcomed. On 10 November 1831, Mr Penny, a bookseller, stationer and circulating library owner, lit his shop in 3 Bath Street with gas for the first time, gas supplied by the upcoming enterprise of a Cockey.
Origins of the family
Lewis Cockey (1626-1711) was a brazier (a person who works in brass), bellfounder and clocksmith who worked in Warminster. His eldest son, William (1663–1748) became a clockmaker. By 1692 he moved to Wincanton, continuing making clocks (four of his lantern clocks are known today) and casting bells, as well repairing them. The youngest son, Edward (1669–1768) stayed with his father and became notable for his exceptionally complicated astronomical clocks, helped by local patronage, particularly for Lord Weymouth at Longleat.
The second son, Lewis Cockey Junior (1666–1703) was a pewterer and bellfounder who moved to work in Frome in 1682 and was buried in the local church there in 1703. Lewes lived at 45 Milk Street, known as ‘The Bell House’, probably using the space at the side, now its garage, for his bell casting. A foundry was soon established in the appropriately named Bell Lane, since demolished, a short distance from the Bell House. His son, William continued the family tradition until his death in 1762. At least 23 towers in Somerset and over 40 in Wiltshire and Dorset have Cockey inscriptions on their bells. Their standard inscriptions were ‘William Cockey’ plus the year, and little else. The fine ring at St John the Baptist, Frome contains such bells – the two trebles dated 1724, and the 6th dated 1746.
However, one of the bells in the Chapel of St Lawrence, Warminster has a more unusual inscription amongst other bells in the church, including those cast either by his father or grandfather. God made Cockey and Cockey made me 1743 After 1752 it seems the bells were cast elsewhere, placing the orders and collecting the accounts being undertaken in Frome. Christopher Cockey (1748–1792) had 7 children, among them Edward.
19th century expansion
Edward Cockey established his own firm in 1816. He is listed as a brazier and iron founder in the Market Place in 1812 through to 1820 and then a brazier, tin man and ironmonger working in Bath Street in 1821. The family diversified, Edward becoming a successful iron-founder, and began casting for the gas industry as well as building his own gas works at Welshmill, managed by his son, Henry. Frome had gas street lighting as early as 1831. Over the years he held almost the whole of the trade of the West Country in the production of gas plant and carried out many contracts in Russia and elsewhere for gasholders and the like.
in 1834 Edward and his son Henry were appointed as weights and measures inspectors for the Frome district of Somerset. The firm’s name has been seen on large cast iron weights. In 1844 Lawrence Hagley, a relative of Edward Cockey’s wife, was appointed the inspector in Frome. It was said that on Edward Cockey's daily inspection of the works if he met any item which displeased him, the person responsible, whether one of his sons, a foreman or workman, was liable to receive a heavy blow across the shoulders from a stick he always carried. Imperfect products were similarly battered.