46 NEWTON MANOR. 



front part of the house, and he has left us his autograph, written 

 with a diamond on one of the window panes 

 "John Cockram, April, 1799. 



Very cold easterly wind." 



The Captain also in his younger days probably planted many 

 of the elm trees in front, which have ever since been the chosen 

 home of a flourishing colony of rooks. Sundry old men in former 

 years have given me various scraps of information about Captain 

 Cockram : he was a captain in the Militia and evidently proud of 

 his title, a somewhat bulky man and very much addicted to 

 smoking a long clay pipe in the winter evenings " down at the 

 Anchor" in Swanage. He seems to have remained a bachelor 

 till rather late in life, when at last he was smitten by the charms 

 of one Mary Cole, who was his cousin. It is said that he had 

 previously made his will, leaving her all his properly, and that 

 when he married the lady he never thought of altering it, the 

 result being that when he died there was no Mary Cole to inherit, 

 and the poor lady was summarily dispossessed by distant relatives, 

 who left her but her bare legal rights. I think the Cockrams must 

 have been a jovial race, for in digging the foundations of the new 

 drawing-room we came upon some scores of old squat Dutch gin 

 bottles, doubtless once tilled with good liquor, very comforting 

 when the cold easterly winds blew at Swanage, and which probably 

 had not contributed much to the king's revenue. Only one small 

 plot had in former times been taken out of the Newton property. 

 It is the pretty little old stone house and garden on the other side 

 of the road known as Newton Cottage. I have never been able to 

 ascertain the exact reason why the Cockrams parted with this 

 house, but I have an old deed dated 1760 conveying it to one 

 Esther Mo'wlem, but who and what Esther Mowlem was nobody 

 seems to know ; probably she may have been a widow, once a Miss 

 Cockram, and this her dower house. I mention this because this 

 alienation makes me rather envious, and for a particular reason ; it 

 is that my house has not got a ghost, whilst Newton Cottage 

 rejoices in the possession of a first-rate one. The legend and 



