Nat Gould

Pilsbury Grange Letter 2

Letter 2 of the Letters from Pilsbury Grange is dated 8 December 1842, and was written by Catherine Cooper to her friend Richard Goodwin Gould.

Mr. R. G. Gould
Messrs. Taylor & Wilsons
Bakewell
Derbyshire

Dear Richard

I duly received your letter, enclosing one for Mr. Batchelor, which I immediately forwarded to him, and doubt not it would be very satisfactory. I beg to apologize for not sooner having sent you his address in full – he has so long lived in Bond St. and is so well known, I seldom put the number of his residence when I direct a letter to him – but perhaps it would be more correct to write as follows “Mr. Batchelor – No. 113 – New Bond Street –London” – at all events it may be convenient for you to know this full address when you arrive at that scene of extraordinary bustle “the Railway Station, in Euston Square” from whence you will probably take a Cab, to convey you & your luggage to Mrs. Batchelors house – you may tell your driver, it is very near the corner of Lower Brook Street.

With heartfelt good wishes, I remain dear Richard
your very sincere friend
Catherine Cooper

Donisthorpe. Decr. 8th

The letter is a folded sheet bearing an imperforate penny red adhesive stamp, with postmarks of Overseal and Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the latter dated 8 December 1842. The recipient Richard Goodwin Gould of Pilsbury Grange preserved the letter.

In dating her letter Catherine Cooper did not give the year, but it was written on 8 December 1842. An enlargement of the postmark, although incomplete, shows that the last figure of the year is 2.

This is an early postmark, from soon after the penny post was introduced in 1840, and the letter was still stamped with the pre-1840 Overseal postmark. (Old habits die hard in the countryside.) The letter was taken from Donisthorpe to the post office in the neighbouring village of Overseal, and next day it reached nearby Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a small market town and the district centre.

The letter is an old-fashioned sealed paper, and with a fine imperforate penny red adhesive stamp with four wide margins. The red stamps were still a novelty in 1842, having only been introduced in the previous year. They replaced the penny blacks, withdrawn because it was difficult to see black ink postmarks on them.

Donisthorpe is a village formerly in a detached portion of Leicestershire surrounded by Derbyshire. The county boundaries were rationalised in 1972 and it is now in Leicestershire. Overseal and Ashby-de-la-Zouch are in Leicestershire..

Euston Station

Catherine Cooper was evidently a relative of the Cooper of Cooper & Batchelor, the "Miss Cooper" that Margaret Gould was so anxious that her son Richard Goodwin Gould should keep in touch with once he was established in London. (Pilsbury Grange Letter 3 dated 15 July 1843.)

She was probably the Catherine Cooper aged 65 of independent means living at Green in Netherseal in 1841 with Caroline Cooper aged 55 and a servant. She does not figure in the 1851 Census, and was probably dead by then.

The London railway station for the midlands and north of England was built in Euston Square and opened for traffic in 1837. It has always been a major London railway station and was completely rebuilt in the 1960s.

In 1842 Richard Goodwin Gould was apparently working for a firm at Bakewell in Derbyshire called Messrs. Taylor & Wilsons, but it may just have been where he arranged for his letters to be sent. He had only recently left military service in the Life Guards. This firm was probably that of the eminent attorney John Taylor. If so the Wilson connection is unknown, but was perhaps the name of a former partner.