Place Name
Named after Charles John Cobb, tea merchant’s clerk, who was a conscientious objector during the First World War. He was refused recognition by his tribunal and was imprisoned five times between 1916 and 1919. The heavy work and harsh conditions, in contrast to his sedentary civilian work, affected his health and he died in March 1919 soon after his final discharge. He left a wife and young child too poor to pay for a gravestone and lay in an unmarked grave in Croydon cemetery until 1988 when a marble headstone was erected by posthumous friends. The words on the stone “I fear God, not man” are from his first trial.
