Bury St Edmunds historian Martyn Taylor looks at the life of legal expert and diarist Henry Crabb Robinson, whose breakfast parties brought Coleridge and Wordsworth to town

Legal expert and diarist Henry Crabb Robinson was born in Bury St Edmunds in 1775, the third son of Henry Robinson and Jemima Crabb, whose family were landowners out at Wattisfield.

As was quite common in the late 18th/19th century he took his mother’s maiden name for his middle Christian name.

The family home was 32 Southgate Street, now Linnet House, due to its close proximity to the River Linnet. Don’t forget numbering of houses did not start in Bury until around 1830.

After leaving school (unusually, not Bury Grammar School) he was apprenticed to a Colchester lawyer and it was here he heard one of John Wesley’s last sermons.

At the age of 25 he was left a reasonable legacy which generated a yearly income and frugally using this, spent the next 10 years travelling around Europe. He started off with studying at Jena University, in Germany, and also meeting several celebrities, such as Goethe and Schiller, who were poets, playwrights and philosophers. During his many travels he mastered several languages, as you might expect, and in 1808 was in Spain.

At this time, the Spanish and Portuguese, along with England’s support, were trying to throw off the yoke of Napoleon’s France, this known to history as The Peninsular War.

During the period Henry was in these war zones he wrote back some accounts of the conflicts to The Times, in effect becoming the first war correspondent.

On his return to England a year later he worked for a short while for The Times office and then decided to continue his law studies. He was called to the Bar as a barrister from The Middle Temple and eventually became leader of the eastern circuit, retiring in 1828, when his practice reached £500 annually.

He became friends with the likes of William Bodham Donne, essayist (a plaque to him is adjacent to the Theatre Royal) and Edward FitzGerald (translator of the Rubiyat of Omar Kayam), a literary circle of the finest calibre.

Linnet House also attracted the likes of Coleridge and Wordsworth (he was also friendly with Thomas Clarkson in nearby St Mary’s Square). After Henry toured Italy together with Wordsworth, the poet dedicated some verses to Henry entitled Memorabilia.

Another acquaintance was Charles Lamb, whose adopted daughter Emma Isola lived at Fornham for a while.

It was these various friendships and relationships that led him to become a founding member of The Athenaeum Club, in London, in 1824 and also expand his copious diaries.

In 1829 he was made a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians and in 1836 he was a founding member of University College, London. Phew!

As a brilliant conversationalist, he was held in great esteem by his colleagues, while his breakfast parties with his many associates were legendary.

He never married and died in London in 1867, being ‘intact of all his faculties’ and was buried in Highgate cemetery; his letters and diaries being published posthumously.

There is an oval plaque that was put on his home in Southgate Street in 1907 to help reinforce Bury’s pageant of that year, as was the plaque to William Bodham Donne, both cultural links to the past; it says CRABB ROBINSON, DIARIST, BORN 1775 DIED 1867.

There is a mystery to be added to this story, because on a wall facing the Greene King barrel yard, in Crown Street, there is a plaque which says, The SOUTH HALF OF THIS Wall belongs to H C ROBINSON Febry. 1829. However, on the other side of the wall is another plaque, facing into the car park of the Chantry Hotel, number 8 Sparhawk Street which says: The NORTH HALF of this Wall belongs to THO. DE CARLE. Febry 1829.

Conversely, on an extension built by Nigel and Valerie Jackson in 1986 on the main part of the hotel, there is within the brickwork yet another plaque (obviously re-sited) which says in capital letters, thus emphasising its importance: THIS WALL IS THE ENTIRE PROPERTY OF THO. DE CARLE 11.SEP.1830.

So it would seem there was a property dispute between Henry Crabb Robinson and the De Carle family. The very terminology used on these plaques obviously conveys there were disputes as to who owned what. The De Carle family were respected stonemasons in Bury, carrying out works for local gentry including the Herveys of Ickworth.

So what was the cause of their dispute with Henry a year after he retired? The property is some distance from Linnet House and the fact the dispute was settled in the De Carle’s favour, by the tenure of the last plaque, proves this had not augured well for the legal training of Henry Crabb Robinson.