This shorter post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt “In the Kitchen”. My ancestor, Gabriel Cracknell, was a successful master cook at University Colleague, Oxford.
University College is the oldest college in Oxford or Cambridge. At the time Gabriel worked there, it was all still
medieval buildings. It wasn’t “modernised”
until the 1630s.
I don’t know anything about Gabriel’s early life, where he
was born or how he trained as a cook. In
the early 1600s and possibly before that, he was employed as a Master Cook at
University College Oxford. The Account
Rolls of University College list Gabriel as a cook in 1608 and 1614.
Some details about the life of an Oxford University Cook can
be found in the article “Oxford College Cooks, 1400-1800” by Helen Clifford in
“Cooks
& Other People: Proceeding of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1995”. As well as cooking, the cook was responsible
for purchasing the food and arranging feasts for the academic staff and
students.
As well as being a cook, Gabriel Cracknell was a man of
property. He was known to have owned at
least four houses in Oxford, two in the High street. He also appears to have had a pub called The
Queen’s Arms, in Oxford. When he died in
1620, Gabriel had £350 in cash and his estate was valued at over £1210, which
was a vast sum of money for that time.
He can’t have earned all of this money with his job as a cook, as the
annual salary was likely around £20. I
wonder if he came from a wealthy family but I can’t find any trace of him prior
to 1604, in spite of his unusual name.
By 1604, Gabriel Cracknell was married to Katherine. I have not yet found a record of their
marriage. In September 1604, their
daughter Anne was baptised at St Peter’s in the East, Oxford. As far as I know, she was their only child. The family evidently had close ties to St
Peter’s in the East, as Anne left a bequest to the church in her 1671 will.
Gabriel Cracknell died in October 1620 and was buried at St
Peter’s in the East, Oxford. His widow,
Katherine, remained connected to University College, as she appears in the
Account Rolls of University College as a widow in 1629. She died in 1637 and was also buried at St
Peter’s in the East.
Only months after Gabriel died, his daughter Anne married
the Reverend William Hastings, a former Oxford University student and grandson
of the Earl of Huntingdon. Anne
inherited at least two of her father’s four houses, as William Hastings very
kindly left them to her in his will in 1635.
At that time, a woman’s property became her husband’s property when she
married.
The origin of the name Cracknell may be a person who made
cracknels, which were crisp breads, so it is an occupational name associated with
cooking. Perhaps Gabriel was descended
from cooks.
I would like to find out more about Gabriel and the source
of his fortune as I am sure it didn’t all come from his work in the kitchen.
Lineage:
- Me
- Mum
- Daphne Smith
- Esther Ilma Lees
- Fanny Sarah Eliza Briggs
- Frederick Henderson Briggs
- Henry Sparrow Briggs
- Jehu Briggs
- Lettice Preston
- Mary Hastings
- Henry Hastings
- Anne Cracknell
- Gabriel Cracknell
