COBBOLD, Bessie Katherine
Bessie Katherine Cobbold was born at Dedham Lodge, Essex on 12 January 1864, youngest child of Dr Rowland Townshend Cobbold, M.R.C.S. (1821-19 December 1895) and his wife Sarah Frances Westhorp (1817-3 June 1891), second daughter of the late Richard Westhorp of Long Melford, who married at Long Melford, Suffolk on 17 September 1846. Bessie was educated at Ashbourne House, Victoria Road, Colchester, where weekly classes in Art were held on Fridays' by William Thompson Griffiths, headmaster of the Ipswich School of Science and Art and in 1881 she was the only pupil to receive two passes as excellent at the South Kensington School of Art, for perspective and geometry, this was followed by studies at the Colchester Art and Literary Institution. As Miss Bessie K. Cobbold of Dedham Lodge, she exhibited several items at the 1883 Woodbridge Industrial & Art Exhibition at the Lecture Hall and was a member of the Ipswich Fine Art Club 1888-1891 and exhibited from Dedham Lodge in 1887, 'Sir Gareth' and 'Archway at Hayes'. On the death of her father in 1895, Bessie Katherine Cobbold and two of her sisters, moved to Kingsthorpe House, Kelvedon, near Braintree, Essex where she died on 13 May 1942, she was unmarried.