William Cubitt

There are two difficulties in researching Sir William Cubitt.

Firstly, disambiguating that Sir William Cubitt [of Buxton], bother of Thomas Cubitt and later Mayor of London, was contemporaneous with Sir William Cubitt [of Dilham – 10 miles or so from Buxton]a great railway engineer.they are often confused sometimes to quite a crazy extent, as in this extract from Change at Kings Cross, Hunter & Thorne, 1990, pg. 60.

‘When Sir William Cubitt and his son Joseph came to plan the Great Northern Railway from King’s Cross…….The architect, Sir William Cubitt’s nephew Lewis Cubitt…….’

Which neatly mangles up the lineage of the two Cubitt clans that were not at all closely related if at all. And inserts Lewis Cubitt into Sir William Cubitt’s close family thus sowing plentiful instant confusion. Cubitt is a reasonably common name in Norfolk but an interesting attempt to disambiguate the various branches and clans Cubitt [Collection for a History of the Family of Cubitt, of Norfolk, Walter Rye, Samuel Miller & Co, 1873 pg. 16] in which Thomas’ branch is termed The Cubitts of Frettenham.

Secondly, there is an erroneous and widely propagated assumption that it was Thomas Cubitt’s company that was merged into Holland & Hannen and Cubitts Ltd. This is not the case at all as it was infact William Cubitt’s [William Cubitt & Co – sometimes later styled W. Cubitt & Co] company that was acquired.

This conflation, which seems quite deliberately propagated, started with the publication of the 1920’s book Holland & Hannen and Cubitts Ltd, The Inception and Development of a Great Building Firm, London, 1923. In the front of which is, in pride of place a photo of Thomas Cubitt and not William and goes on to confidently state [pg. 9]

‘Thomas Cubitt, the founder, was the friend and confidant of Queen Victoria…..’

The reasons for this conflation are pretty clear as Thomas was the better known brother for his development of Belgravia and as builder to the royal family.

This conflation was also further sustained in Hermione Hothouse’s book Thomas Cubitt, Mater Builder, Universal Books, NY, 1971 which is puzzling as she had access to the full archive and in the 1970’s pamphlet that Hobhouse produced for the company. Hobhouse probably relied on the firms complied history as none of the partnership documents survived. But in a personal conversation with Lord he admit very clear that this was an error.

It is also possible that Thomas Cubitt’s business carried on by the Waller family until the late 1800’s was brought back into the fold of Holland & Hannen and Cubitts Ltd.  It is possible this could be reflected in 26 volumes of papers from Holland and Hannen & Cubbits, some from 1856 onwards but none pre 1855, which were deposited in the Wolverhampton City Archives [ref DX-912] in 2003 by Tarmac Construction. These records all relate to William Cubitt & Co.