Remembering Philip Thornton

Phillip David Edward Thornton

28/6/1946 – 7/10/2021

Phillip Thornton passed away aged 74 on October 7th 2021. Phillip was one of eight children born to Edward and Terry Thornton. The family moved houses a number of times as they grew, but always stayed in Burford, Oxfordshire. Before Phillip’s parents retired, Springfield House was the family home.

Phillip married Margaret Timms, and they started their own family, accumulating three daughters; Michelle, Sarah and Amanda.

Philip was a dedicated family man and he would take his family on holidays. Every year, he would come home Friday and hook the caravan up and drive them to the coast. Unpack the caravan and pitch up the awning, and then drive back to work. He would return the following weekend to collect his family, and the caravan. At that time he worked in London. The work was manually digging holes, trenches and shoring up. It was filthy, long, wet, cold, hard days, often seven days a week. The work he was doing would nowadays be done with machines.

Phillip became self-employed in groundworks, working in London; it was back-breaking work, all by hand initially. Eventually, Phillip and Margaret decided to become a company calling themselves ‘P & M Thornton’. Again, doing groundworks, foundations and roads, plus drainage. It was long hours and weekends were included.

Springfield House came with a few acres and outbuildings which housed pigs, geese and ponies. As the family aged, they came together to make several companies doing threshing, ploughing, harvesting and landscaping. The ‘Thorntons’ were one of the first families to own a combine harvester in the area.

Phillip had an inquisitive mind for machinery, starting with dissecting typewriters and moving on to farming equipment/machinery. This knowledge of Phillip’s became evident at a summer fete, and a John Deere tractor competition. Entrants had to point out the faults on the John Deere and win a limited-edition John Deere tractor toy. Philip loved this competition, he entered three times, one for each of his daughters. Each entry he would notice more faults! There was much banter between Philip and the owner of the tractor that they had faked some faults! Philip had found more faults than was expected or previously known about!

The Thornton daughters gave three grandchildren to Phillip and Margaret. Philip embraced each Grandchild with his usual stoic self, introducing them to a wonderful world of diggers, quads, motorbikes and ponies. Philip started going to steam rallies with his Grandchildren. Even buying an old wreck of an old tipping trailer and renovating it with his Grandson, Adam. They would hang some of the tractor parts up in the shed and spray the metal parts.

Phililp retired in 2012 and updated his home, now Blackheath Farm. Phillip had a great drive to push on, that never wavered, simply never stopped doing things. Machinery needed a lot of maintenance, as did the fields. Even when his Cancer was debilitating, he would push through the pain to accomplish yet another task.

Phillip is and will be missed greatly by his family and friends.