 In the early nineteenth century, while travelling in Italy, Charles Western, 1st Baron Western obtained Neapolitan pigs to cross with his Essex sows.One of his tenants, Fisher Hobbs, bred the resulting Neapolitan-Essex boars with his "coarse" Essex sows and established the Improved Essex.In 1840 an Improved Essex boar and sow, both bred by Hobbs, each took first prize in its class at the second show of the Royal Agricultural Society at Cambridge.