34
New Blackmore Vale, November 12, 2021
blackmorevale.net
History
Fascinating history of farming family The Knott family is probably one of the oldest farming families in Sturminster Newton. Philip Knott steps back in time after spotting his great grandfather, Tom Knott, in our cover photograph in a recent edition. Tom is fifth from the left behind the gate. My great grandfather, Tom Knott (snr) lived in a house at the top of Newton Hill, now known as Larkspur. He rented farm buildings and a cow stall, adjoining Stalbridge Lane, from the Pitt Rivers Estate, along with fields in the Colber area, known as Oaks Farm. Before taking on the Oaks Farm tenancy he rented one of a pair of cottages at Broadoak, along with two small orchards and a paddock on the road towards Dirty Gate, where he kept horses used for his contract haulage business. The two main contracts were hauling gravel from the quarry at Okeford Common, where the car scrap yard now stands, for council road building and for the milk factory at Butts Pond. On alternate days he hauled coal from the railway goods yard to fire the factory boilers. Tom’s brother Walter lived in a shepherd’s hut in the orchard at Broadoak, where he kept a pony, a donkey, geese and poultry. The pony was used for towing his cart on his Western Gazette delivery round every Thursday. Tom married Emma Pope in St Mary’s
n Tom Knott, circled, with a group of farming friends on a rabbit hunt
n Pumping water from the Stour at Newton and, inset, Herbert Knott with the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War
Church, Sturminster Newton, in 1883 and the couple had eight children, sadly two died in infancy. Ivor and Lily never
married and worked together on the family farm, taking over the tenancy of Oaks Farm, when Tom Snr retired. My grandfather Herbert and his brother, Tom (Jnr), enlisted for service in the Dorset Yeomanry at the start of the First World War, taking their own horses with them, serving in the Middle East and the Gallipoli landings, in the Dardanelles, with Hebert transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in 1916. On his release from the
forces, Herbert decided that he wanted to become a farmer, like his father before him, and, shortly after my father Ken was born, he moved from Broadoak to Rolls Mill, adjoining the A357 Ralph Down, where he rented a house, and erected a cow shed on the land from the Pitt Rivers Estate. After the First World War, Tom Jnr, became landlord of The Red Lion Inn at Newton before moving to Rockhill Farm at Stourton Caundle in