Nat Gould

Thomas Gilbert 1720-1798

Thomas Gilbert

Thomas Gilbert was born in 1720, the son of Thomas Gilbert 1688-1742 of Cotton Hall near Cheadle in Staffordshire and his first wife wife nee Elizabeth Philips 1691-1729. He was baptised at Alton in Staffordshire on 26 June 1720.

Thomas Gilbert 1720-1798 was also twice married. His first wife was Ann Philips of Heath House in Tean, Staffordshire, whom he married in 1762 when he was 42 years old. She was of the same family as his mother. Upon their engagement he presented his fiancee with a lottery ticket, which won the enormous prize of £10,000 (1). They had two sons:

1. Thomas Gilbert 1762-1841. He was educated at Brasenose College in Oxford, ordained deacon in 1794 and priest in 1795, and appointed curate of Ellesmere in Shropshire in 1794 and Cockshutt on 1795. He was Rector of Little Gaddesden in Hertfordshire from 1796 to 1813. The right of appointing clergy to these parishes belonged to his father's employer the Duke of Bridgewater. During his incumbency he conducted the funeral of his patron the Duke of Bridgewater. He also became curate of Cotton in 1795 and again in 1830.

2. Richard Gilbert 1766-1837. He married Jane Batt, a daughter of John Batt of Moditonham Hall, Botesfleming in Cornwall. They had two sons, Thomas Gilbert 1800-1843 and George Gilbert 1805-1847. After their mother died, Richard Gilbert 1766-1837 married Maria Duff MacFarlane in 1814. They had five more children. Their father Richard Gilbert died in 1837 and was buried at Egham in Middlesex.

After the death of Ann Gilbert nee Philips in 1770 Thomas Gilbert 1720-1798 married Mary Crauford (or Crawford) of Auckinames in Lanarkshire on 27 January 1777 at St Anne's church, Soho in London (2). She was the only daughter of Lt. Colonel George Crauford of the 53rd Regiment. They had a daughter Catherine Gilbert 1778-1791.

Thomas Gilbert 1720-1798 and his brother John Gilbert 1724-1795 were land agents to the Marquess of Stafford and the Duke of Bridgewater. They were also important canal pioneers, working on many projects with the Duke of Bridgewater and James Brindley. Their waterways include the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal and the Trent and Mersey Canal.

The Gilbert brothers also brought about very many other industrial enterprises in eighteenth-century Staffordshire, Shropshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Cumberland and alsewhere. For example, they brought industry to the Churnet Valley, developed the Cauldon Low quarries and the graphite mines of Borrowdale, and had interests in the Ecton copper mines. Thomas Gilbert was granted a coat-of-arms in 1759.

Thomas Gilbert was trained as a lawyer, and was a skilled diplomat. Although promoting many successful and financially rewarding commercial enterprises, he was not solely concerned with financial gain. He served as Member of Parliament for Newcastle-uner-Lyme from 1763 to 1768, and for Lichfield from 1768 to 1794. During those thirty years in Parliament he introduced important poor law reform, motivated by his genuine humanitarian concern. Like his brother John Gilbert, he was a self-effacing man who warrants far greater recognition for his immense contribution to English industrial development, exceeding that accorded to the more the Duke of Bridgewater and James Brindley (3).

Thomas Gilbert died at Cotton Hall in 1798. In the year before he died Thomas Gilbert 1720-1798 had made a complex and rather eccentric Will. In it he seems obsessed with his plate, linen and furniture, laying down an elaborate procedure whereby each succeeding generation was to sign an inventory and ensure that the goods were left in good order for the next generation, as may be seen from a summary of the provisions.

Furthermore Thomas Gilbert anticipated family trouble. His widow Mary Gilbert was the stepmother of his sons The Reverend Thomas Gilbert and Richard Gilbert. Provision was made for any dispute to be settled by his executors, his friend Thomas Morris and nephew David Birds.

The Cotton Hall estate went to his elder son the The Reverend Thomas Gilbert. His widow Mary Gilbert received an annuity and the right to live there. She did so until she died, but then The Reverend Thomas Gilbert chose not then take up residence there, although he drew the rents from the estate. He died unmarried in Paris in 1841, whereupon the Cotton estate passed to his nephew, Thomas Gilbert 1800-1843, the son of his brother Richard Gilbert. He died in 1843.

In 1844 the Cotton Hall estate was bought at auction by the Earl of Shrewsbury, who made extensions to the building to the designs of the great Victorian architect Pugin. A Roman Catholic boarding school, originally founded at Wolverhampton in 1763, moved to Cotton Hall in 1873 and became known as Cotton College or St Wilfrid’s College. The building was further extended between 1874 and 1932. The school closed in 1987 because of financial problems, and tragically this nationally important building has fallen into disrepair. Only Saint Wilfrid's church remains intact. The remainder is now derelict and vandalised.

(1) Agents of Revolution : John and Thomas Gilbert - Entrepreneurs Peter Lead (1989) page 23.
(2) Miscellania Genealogica & Heraldica 5th Series Volume 8 page 271.
(3) Agents of Revolution : John and Thomas Gilbert - Entrepreneurs Peter Lead (1989) pages 53-55 and elsewhere. Peter Lead's book provides an excellent account of the lives and works of Thomas Gilbert and John Gilbert. Scholarly yet highly readable, it succeeds in making the case for their prime importance in canal and other English industrial development.