In 1800, John Brickwood owned all the land in the ECCO area outside Croydon Common.  After its enclosure the following year, he owned considerably more. Brickwood was a merchant, colonial agent and banker. As a London member of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa he was involved in the trade in enslaved people.

Our webpage about John Brickwood has been updated. Many thanks to Kake Pugh and Brenda Hawkins for completing the transcription of his will with consummate skill. Brenda Hawkins also provided more accurate information about Brickwood’s birth & family and Kake Pugh a transcript of the Brickwood’s purchase of tithes in the area north of Addiscombe Road in 1791.

No image of John Brickwood has yet been discovered, although one of him on his horse was left in his will to his close friend, John Grantham.  The latter is likely to be the civil engineer of that name who had helped make a plan of the route of the Croydon Canal in 1811.   However, he is best known as the surveyor of the Shannon Navigation inland waterway.  It is possible that Brickwood’s portrait may still belong to one of Grantham’s family.

It would also be good to know whether the model of his cow “Empress” is still in the possession of the heirs of John Timothy Swainson of Liverpool, one of the seven founding members of the Linnean Society.

You can find out more about the history of East Croydon here