LIFE GOES ON: AN INTRODUCTION

MY GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

THE SIXTEEN FAMILIES

KNOTT - I - BOWLES - I - WATERS - I - HARRALL - I - PAGE - I - WISEMAN - I - CROSS - I - CARTER

CORNWELL - I - HUCKLE - I - MORTLOCK - I - MANSFIELD - I - REYNOLDS - I - CARTER - I - ANABLE - I - STEARN

CHRONOLOGY - I - DRAMATIS PERSONAE - I - WHERE PEOPLE CAME FROM - I - CALENDAR

MAP OF ELY - I - MAP OF MEDWAY
MAP OF CAMBRIDGE AND DISTRICT

THE WORKHOUSE

WORLD WAR I - I - WORLD WAR II

simonknott.co.uk I home I e-mail

LIFE GOES ON

The Knott family: the story of the century in and around the Medway towns

My Father's Father's Father's Father's family
The narrative can be read in conjunction with the Knott family tree. You can see places significant to the Knott family on the site map of the Medway
This family story includes material from, and links with, the stories of the Bowles, Waters and Harrall families. My direct ancestors are highlighted in bold the first time they appear in the narrative.

The story of the Knott family is the story of the Industrial Revolution. When we first enter their lives they are agricultural labourers. As the 19th Century progresses, they leave the fields and go into the factories. As the Medway Towns grow and merge into each other, forming one of the world's first industrial conurbations, the Knott family come there, and for more than a century there they remain. At first, the Knott men are employed in the brickfields, and later in the cement factories. As the industries decline, so the Knott family starts to spread out into the rest of England.

Knott is a common surname in east Kent even today, and when my great-great-great-grandfather William Knott was taken to St Mary's church in Dover to be christened on 4th May 1795 he was one of a dozen or more William Knotts baptised in and around the town in the last few years of the 18th Century. His parents were William Knott and Mary Prebble - of them, no more is known. By the age of 21, William was forty miles west in Rainham, the most easterly of what would become the Medway towns, and it was there, at St Margaret's parish church, that he married Caroline Wells on 30th March 1817. Caroline was the daughter of William Wells and Mary Wells, and the Wells surname appears frequently in the Rainham parish registers during the 18th and 19th centuries. Caroline had been christened in Rainham on the 25th November 1798; if she was baptised as an infant, it would mean that she was just 18 years old when she married William Knott.

After their marriage, William and Caroline lived in Rainham and nearby Gillingham, where their first children were born, including a boy who died in infancy. In 1826 they were at Northfleet for the birth of their oldest surviving son, William. Soon after, William and Caroline were back in Rainham, but they made what seems to have been a permanent move to Gillingham in the middle of the 1830s. Over the course of the years there would be perhaps ten children in all, although it is not certain that all the children with Caroline on the night of the 1841 census are hers. Two years after the census, on 31st March 1843, their youngest son was born, my great-great-grandfather George Henry Knott. These are the known children of William and Caroline Knott:

Their father William had been away from home for the night of the 1841 census, but he makes an appearance on the 1851 census when he, Caroline and three of their children, as well as their granddaughter Rebecca, were living at 8 Church Street, Gillingham. William gave his occupation as an agricultural labourer, and he had been described as a labourer in the Northfleet and Gillingham parish records on the occasion of the baptism of several of his children. But little more is known about him, because by the time of the 1861 census he was dead, and Caroline was a widow. There are a number of deaths of a William Nott or Knott in Kent in the period, but only two are in the Medway area, and only one of about the right age, a 66 year old William Knott who died of the symptoms of cholera at the Union House in Strood on 1st September 1857. This is likely to be our William. He was buried in Strood churchyard, not Gillingham, but the paupers' grave plot there would probably have been used for all workhouse deaths. The burial would have been one of the last in the old churchyard before the extension opened the following year

By 1861 William's youngest son George, my great-great-grandfather, was eighteen years old, and had moved with his mother Caroline to Hillington Square, Gillingham. The Church Street house was now occupied by George's oldest brother William and his wife Mary and their children. George was an agricultural labourer, probably working on the same farm as his mother. A mile or so off in Pleasant Row, Chatham, a seventeen year old servant girl was living in the household of her uncle. Her name was Mary Ann Bowles, and she would be my great-great-grandmother.

Mary Ann was born in the Mall, Preston-next-Faversham, on 1st November 1843, and she seems to have spent many of her childhood years in the Faversham workhouse. She had a rather extraordinary background. When her mother Caroline Thompson had been pregnant with her, she had walked the 300 miles from the Devonport workhouse in Plymouth, Devon to Faversham in Kent, accompanied by Mary Ann's five year old sister. At the time of the census of 1841, two years before Mary Ann was born, her mother had been living under her married name Bowles in the Devonport workhouse. Ten years later, Caroline was in the Faversham workhouse in Kent with four children, including Mary Ann. Caroline had married William Bowles at Stoke Damarel in Devon in 1837, but it soon becomes clear that the children she had after her arrival in Kent were fathered by Thomas Bowles, who was William's brother. Mary Ann Bowles's father was declared as Thomas on both her birth certificate and in the Preston-next-Faversham parish records. You can read more about the Bowles family on the Bowles family story.

It is quite possible that by 1861 Mary Ann Bowles already knew George Knott, but on the 17th August 1862 she married Henry Welch at Faversham parish church. Mary Ann was pregnant, and their son Charles Henry Welch was born in early 1863. About this time, Henry Welch's father died, and the couple seem to have returned to Gillingham with their son to look after Henry's mother, his siblings, and the family greengrocer business. It is unclear what happened next, but by March 1866 Mary Ann had left her husband, for George Knott and Mary Ann Welch were living as man and wife at High Street, Gillingham, and Mary Ann had given birth to George Knott's son, who was called George Bowles Knott, with no mention of Mary Ann's married name on the birth certificate. But George and Mary Ann were not married. Mary Ann's legal husband Henry Welch and their son Charles were living with Henry's recently widowed mother at New Brompton, a few miles away. George and Mary Ann moved to Upchurch, just outside of the Medway Towns, where a second son was born in 1868, and then on the 3rd December 1869 at Upchurch was born their third son, my great-grandfather William Knott. The 1871 census shows George and Mary Ann living in Upchurch with their three sons, George being recorded as a labourer, Mary Ann recorded with the surname Knott. And then, a few months later, Mary Ann's legal husband Henry Welch died of smallpox.

At last, George and Mary Ann were free. They married at All Saints, Frindsbury, Kent on 17th March 1872. Mary Ann gave her name as Mary Ann Welch and her status as widow. The witnesses were George's sister Jane and her husband, Joseph Cox. There would be five more children, but three of George and Mary Ann's children would be dead before the 1911 census. Several of the Knott boys were professional soldiers. One of them spent most of twenty years in India before fighting in Iraq in the First World War, which he survived. Another brother headed off to Ireland, and we find him in 1901 in Portsmouth as an infantry instructor. He died young, as did his sister Caroline and his brother Albert. These are the eight children of George and Mary Ann Knott:

My great-grandfather William had been born in Upchurch, but when he was about three years old he moved with his parents and brothers to the neighbouring village of Halstow for the birth of Albert and Caroline, both of whom would die in childhood. After this, there is a curious gap of eight years in the birth of children. We know that by 1881 the family were back in the Medway Towns at Gillingham, where George was working as a labourer in a brickfield. It seems likely that the Knott family were not very well off at this time, for in 1883 George's mother Caroline died in the Chatham Workhouse at the age of 84.

However, the following year the family were living a few miles west in Brompton Road in the Strood district of Rochester, where George and Mary Ann Knott would remain for the rest of their lives. George and Mary Ann's daughter Caroline died at the age of eight, and was buried in Strood cemetery on 23rd October 1884. The following day, their daughter Lilla was baptised at Strood St Nicholas. From this time onwards, Rochester would be seen by the family as their home town. At the time of the 1891 census, George and Mary Ann were living in Grange Road, actually just over the border from Strood in the Frindsbury district. George was working as a general labourer in the brickfields, probably the Manor Works to the north of Frindsbury. A short distance off in the rather more upmarket new houses of Bryants Terrace lived the Waters family, George and Mary Ann Waters with their daughters Mary Ann and Beatrice. My great-grandfather William Knott was still living at home at the age of 21 at the time of the 1891 census, but on the 3rd December 1892 he married Mary Anne Waters at St Mary's church in Strood, Rochester, which was roughly halfway between the Knott and Waters households. It was William's 22nd birthday. It is likely that the Knott and Waters families already knew each other before meeting in Strood. Twenty years earlier, the Knott and Waters families had both been living at the adjacent villages of Upchurch and Low Halstow.

William and his new bride moved into a house in Cuxton Road on the other side of Strood High Street, where their eldest daughter was born nine months later. William worked as a labourer in one of the new cement factories which had sprung up along the Frindsbury waterfront. Another daughter was born in Cuxton Road, and then the family moved right into the centre of Strood on London Road. They were there for the birth of a daughter and for the 1901 census, before moving back to Cuxton Road.

Then, in the early years of the 20th Century, William and Mary Ann took their family some fifteen miles west to Dartford, for William to work in the vast cement works there. While they were there, their youngest son was born, Vincent Helgia Knott, my grandfather. He was born on the 15th of February 1908 at 34 West Hill, Dartford in Kent. The house still exists, on the main road into the centre of Dartford from London. Vincent Helgia was baptised at Holy Trinity, Dartford on 22nd April 1908. As a very young child, he would be put on the bar of the One Bell at Wilmington in Dartford, the beerhouse then run by his mother's parents, and asked to sing. As a result, he acquired the nickname 'Joe' among the customers. He was called Joe by everyone who knew him for the rest of his life.

By the time of the 1911 census the family had moved to Providence Street in Greenhithe on the outskirts of Dartford, on the edge of the cement works where William Knott worked. This is now the site of the Bluewater shopping centre. By the end of the decade, the family were back in the Strood district of Rochester, living at 96 Temple Street, not far from George and Mary Ann's shop. William and his wife would also now remain in Rochester for the rest of their lives.

William was a labourer, like all of my great-grandfathers, but he seems to have had more physically demanding jobs than many of my other ancestors, describing himself variously as a cement labourer, a chalk digger, a burner in a cement factory, a brickfield labourer and even a stevedore. William and Mary Ann had six children:

Joe 's family lived at 96 Temple Street throughout his childhood. Joe's grandparents George and Mary Ann Knott were close at hand, and, while George was still working as a labourer, they opened a small sweetshop and general store in their Grange Road terraced house. The shop was in business at the time of both the 1901 and 1911 censuses. In 1913, Kelly's Directory of Kent, Surrey and Sussex listed the following under shopkeepers: 'Knott George 58, Grange Road, Frindsbury, Rochester'. It was probably the most stable and successful that either side of the family had been for generations. On 27th November 1916, Mary Ann Knott, formerly Welch, née Bowles, died of liver cancer at the Grange Road house. She was 73 years old. 58 Grange Road survives today as a private house. Her husband George George Knott died on the 11th June 1921 at his son's home, 96 Temple Street. He was 78 years old. my grandfather Joe Knott was a thirteen year old boy living in the house at the time. Both George and Mary Ann were buried in plot A192 of Strood Cemetery, just to the south of the cemetery chapel.

Joe may have worked as a labourer in a cement works after he left school, but in about 1931 he left Rochester looking for work. The family continued to live in Temple Street, but it was badly bombed during the Second World War and finally demolished in the 1960s. The photograph above was taken just before the final demolition of the street - the houses on the left hand side are already boarded up. The identity of the woman is unknown. The location is now the site of Strood Tesco. In February 2011, while wandering around this area, I met an old couple who had both been children on Temple Street at the time Joe was growing up there. They were able to point out exactly where 96 Temple Street had been (now within the Tesco car park) and they gave me a vivid picture of life in the street at that time. They had not known the Knotts by name, but it felt like a remarkable touchstone.

Joe would not go back to live in the Medway Towns. In the early 1930s he worked on road-building projects in Yorkshire where he met Arthur Page, the brother of his future wife Phyllis. Arthur was another migrant worker, and Joe came back with him to East Anglia, where he met my grandmother. Joe went to work for British Sugar at Cantley in east Norfolk, but he married Phyllis Page at Ely Register Office on 15th August 1932, when he was 24 and she was just 19. Joe's address was 9 Council Cottages Cantley. The witnesses were Phyllis's brother Percy and her sister Violet. Interestingly, Joe gave the occupation of his father as Greengrocer, although it is unlikely that William had taken over the running of the shop in Grange Road after his father George's death, because the shop was in different hands at the time of the 1925 Kelly's Directory.

They went to live at Council Cottages, Cantley, and then in 1933 they moved to Ipswich, firstly living in lodgings in Tacket Street in the town centre, and then in a rented house in Cavendish Street, the same street that I would live in almost exactly half a century later. Joe worked for Fisons on Cliff Road, who were constructing a new factory. They moved to 20 Fletcher Road on the new Gainsborough Estate in Ipswich, where their first child and only daughter was born. The factory was completed the following year, and they returned to Ely in 1935, where they would remain.

Joe and Phyllis lived at 25 Willow Walk off of Waterside, where my father and his three brothers were born - Joe and Phyl had five children in all. The house is now demolished. Joe Knott rarely spoke about his family in Kent, and his children were told almost nothing about them, although they did on occasion in the 1940s receive visits from his sister Gladys and his brother William. Joe was 31 when the Second World War broke out. He spent the War as a motorcycle dispatch rider, mostly in Italy. After he returned to Ely, the family moved to a new council house at 37 Chief's Street in 1947. They lived there for the rest of their lives. In the 1940s and 1950s Joe bred racing pigeons and canaries.

Joe's parents, my great-grandparents, both died in the early 1950s. William Knott died on 27th July 1951 of exhaustion and internal haemorrhage. Mary Ann Knott died on 15th April 1952 of heart failure and senile decay. They both died at 143 Maidstone Road, Rochester, the home of their daughter Gladys Violet Allen, who notified both deaths. William and Mary Ann were buried in the same grave plot as William's parents, plot A192 in Strood Cemetery.

Joe worked for British Sugar until he retired in the early 1970s. For a while, Joe and Phyllis owned a caravan in Heacham, and enjoyed holidays on the Norfolk coast. He had a great pride in his garden at Chief's Street, spending hours tending his fruit and vegetables until he was well into his eighties. I would regularly visit them at Chief's Street in the late 1970s and 1980s, and Joe was aways keen to show me around his garden. I am pleased that I have a photograph, taken in 1987, of him doing this. I particularly remember his gooseberry bushes - he would take great delight in watching his grandchildren trying to eat the sour fruit! Joe's children were near at hand, one son living a few streets away and all the others within 15 miles or so. His wife Phyllis's brother and sister also lived nearby. Joe is still remembered for his fondness for the horses, and his friendships with prominent sportsmen. He never went back to Kent. He outlived my other grandparents, lived to hold my son as a baby, and died in Ely in the Princess of Wales Hospital in 1996 at the age of 87.