Sadly, Croxby Pond has gone. (Plus: a record carp, Hewitt’s Brewery, electrotherapy machines and a museum in Devon).

Croxby Pond was probably in situ since the last ice age. It has now silted up and is no more. Trees grow where there was water in the 1980s. The surrounding plantation has grown significantly. (The nearby lake at Croxby dates to c1960.)

The enamel badge by L. Simpson (London) Ltd. dates to sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. The aerial view was taken in 2022.

Croxby Pond is named in the record books. In 1902, Otto Christop Joseph Gerhardt Ludwig Overbeck landed a carp weighing 17lb 8oz, the first British record. Otto Overbeck (1860-1937) lived at 5 Bull Ring, Grimsby. As a highly qualified industrial chemist, he was the Scientific Director of Hewitt Brothers’ Brewery in Grimsby.

Otto Overbeck was British but was descended from a distinguished Dutch family. As well as working at the Grimsby brewery for 37 years, he was an inventor. From the late 1920s, he marketed various models of his “Overbeck Rejuvenator”, an electrotherapy machine. Patents in many countries were taken out from about 1925. “Overbeck Rejuvenator” models were only available from Chantry House, Grimsby. The ‘Overbeck’s Rejuvenator’ company was still based at Chantry House in 1948, over ten years after the death of the inventor. The company was run by Edwin C. Ayre. The company trademark was still the signature of Otto Overbeck.

Otto Overbeck marketed his rejuvenator worldwide and made a fortune. Following his retirement in 1928, he retired to ‘Sharpitor’, Salcombe in Devon. His large, Edwardian house with superb views is now ‘Overbeck’s Museum and Garden’, a National Trust property. A brace of carp, with a painting of Croxby Pond, as a backdrop can be seen in the museum. The Croxby view was painted by Overbeck himself.

Note: Otto Overbeck was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a member of the Geological Society of London and the Chemical Society. He was a collector of all manner of artefacts and tropical plants.

Note: Otto Overbeck was a keen patron of boys’ clubs. In 1929, he was charged with indecent assaults against boys from the Grimsby Dolphin Swimming Club. He was acquitted on all counts following his trial in Derbyshire. The newspapers of the time reported the case widely. It appears that Otto Overbeck went on to support boys’ clubs in the years after the trial.

Research by Grimsby & Cleethorpes Museum.