| Dad was born in Worth Matravers, at Channel View, which
was a wooden bungalow situated opposite the Square and Compass, just
up from Miss Begbie’s ‘Seal Cottage’. Mum’s parents had lived in
Worth, at the old stable house that was closest to the dairy yard of
Compact Farm. That was when they were first married, a bit of a
shotgun wedding between the Farmer’s son and the Catholic Dairy
Maid.
Granddad’s mother was Louisa Martha Ford nee Hunt. Her family
ancestors were Robert Hunt and Peggy Shepherd, and Robert Hunt
Junior and Eliza Corben, followed by Robert Hunt and Martha Miller
Stone, who were her parents. Within that earlier mix was Bower,
Sanders/Saunders, Miller-Stone, and several others that go back to
the early Worth Matravers registers, as well as other wider Purbeck
and Dorset based Ancestors. I’ve managed somehow to not be too
related to myself with the Purbeck Ancestors, although there’s been
a few close shaves, I’m sure.
Dorset Blue Vinney
At Compact Farm, Grandad George Ellis Ford was initially employed
as an extra dairy hand and looking after the farm horses. He told me
that there had also been Dorset Blue Vinney produced at Weston’s old
dairy, and that he was also involved in that, but it had become not
such a popular cheese, and so it was considered not worthwhile
continuing with the re-establishing of the production of it for
long.
The production had still been going on up until 1923, and as Grandad
was at Compact Farm starting from the April of 1926, it appears that
farmer Strange had thought about re-establishing the production of
Dorset Blue Vinney between 1923 and up until late 1926 and given it
up altogether in perhaps the autumn of 1926. Then making use of the
cheese making equipment that was still there in the building closest
to where the Bottle-green Barley-Beef silo is, which was apparently
still there when Farmer Strange purchased the last part of Weston
Farm.
And from what I recall Granddad saying, that part of Weston had not
been sold on again until 1923, and he thought that it had been
bought in the first Worth Sale of 1919, and the farmer who bought it
then, had held onto his part of Weston from 1919 up until 1923. Then
Farmer Strange bought that final bit of Weston from him, which to me
does seem quite accurate that not long after April 1926, the
production of Blue Vinney was ceased altogether at Worth Matravers.
Another villager, Olive Miller nee Grant, had mentioned to me about
the cheese making in that building and described the large wide
wooden trough and watching the men and some of the women working on
it and the butter churning and the bulging, drooping, dripping
cloths hanging over pans during cottage cheese and clotted cream
making. I think that it was Dora Wallace nee Lander who had
mentioned it to me too, and Dora also talked about the sail cloths
that had washed ashore being dragged up from Chapmans Pool and
hoisted up between two long poles in the village gardens, hung to
dry, tears stitched and then the canvas sail cloths were sold on to
the farmers for covering their haystacks.
Copper rods were used in the Blue Vinney production I think, and
when Granddad moved to Race Farm, at Lychett, he was initially
involved in helping with making the cheese, and again he was there
looking after the various farm horses and was promised a job in
charge of the dairy breeding herd and the heifers. The job was
available due to the man who had been doing the job, was supposed to
have been leaving, only he never left when Granddad was there.
Granddad also worked at Morden, Home Farm and at what is now known
as ‘Farmer Palmer’s’, but only to supplement his poor income. So
really, he was struggling a bit, and at that point he was just a
jobbing farm labourer in the end.
Granddad George Ellis Ford
Granddad made friends with members of the Singleton family who
lived somewhere nearby, and work was a bit of a hit and miss affair.
Although he was given good accommodation in one of the cottages near
the school, his wages were up and down, depending on what he was
sent to work on each week. He then went off briefly to Everton in
Hampshire to work for a member of the wider family, then returned to
Kimmeridge to help with Swalland when his father was very ill.
Just before the outbreak of WW2, he and the family (five children by
then) all moved on to Bindon Dairy, where my Aunt Doreen was born,
and was working for Arthur Hansford, where they also made a
hard-cheese, along with butter, cottage cheese and clotted cream.
The house suffered some damage during a bombing raid at Wool and
Bovington, when the Ford children were still in bed. Helen managed
to grab Mum, shoving her under the bed and laying on top of her to
protect her just seconds before the windows blew in due to the force
of a bomb blast nearby. Mum was sent away to stay with the Singleton
family while the house and windows were repaired, and later in the
early 1950s the Dairy House was demolished and only part of the old
barn still exists.
The Ford family (George Ellis Ford and Louisa nee Hargedon and their
six children) moved back to Purbeck- Orchard Hill Kingston- just
after WW2. There, was the wreckage of a fighter plane in the field
in front of the two cottages there, and inside the house was a poor
dead cat that had been locked in by the former resident when they
left some weeks beforehand. Kingston was where George Ellis Ford’s
parents had met and subsequently married, and Granddad became one of
the Dairyman for the Encombe Estate.
Initially the cows were milked at Encombe Dairy, but when the new
farm manager was appointed and some of the men were then given a
different job, which mainly involved clearing hedges, gorse and
brambles, my Grandparents and youngest aunt, Doreen shifted off out
again to Longham Dairy, then back into Purbeck at Woolgarston (or
the other way around). Then finally to Pirbright along the valley
road and Harmans Cross where granddad worked at upper Quarr farm,
more or less where he’d started from
when his family left him behind under the care of his aunt and
uncle.
Back then, they looked after the small herd owned by Granddad’s
father William Ellis Ford, who, with his eldest sons set-up at
Tarrant so that his brother Bertie Ford could attend Blandford
School where he’d been awarded a scholarship due to his musical
talent and to also help out a member of the extended family from a
female/maternal line within the Ellis and Ford family line.
Granddad George was left behind and attended school at Langton St
George’s for a couple of years. His best friend at school was George
Grant who was the school’s gardener. Later, I attended Langton St
Georges along with his grandsons, Brian and Colin Grant.
After they’d lived at Pirbright, and Granddad was no longer needed
and had had a brief spell as a builder’s labourer for my dad and my
mum’s brother, my Uncle Bob Ford, off they, my grandparents George
and Louisa, went again. They moved to Bovington Camp, where my
Granddad George E. Ford was employed as the gardener for the
officers and in charge of the main Camp’s flowerbeds. However, he
cycled to Worth Matravers on four days per week to do Jo Lawrence’s
and Basil Stump’s gardening at their plot adjoining Happy Cottage,
which Bert Shepperd formerly of 1 London Row used to do before him.
And granddad also did the gardening for Peter and Biddy Newton when
they lived at Faraway and had Abbascombe Poultry Farm.
Sometimes when Granddad would ride back to Bovington Camp at the end
of his sometimes very long working day, he’d take a nap in the hedge
on his way home, or he’d sleep at Old Parliament at Langton
Matravers, where my Auntie Dor lived with her first husband Peter
Lovell. And on some evenings, Doreen and Peter didn’t know to expect
him, so on a couple of occasions a young lady named Yvonne who
stayed with them during her holidays, sleeping in their spare
bedroom, would get the fright of her life.
After returning from an evening out and when in the bathroom, she
noted my Granddad’s false teeth soaking in a glass on the shelf and
then running to her bedroom only to find a toothless old man, with a
hooked nose, snoring away with his mouth flopped wide open and
already in her bed…apparently she screamed the house down and ended
up sleeping with my cousins in their room.
Granddad Ford suffered from rheumatoid arthritis; he also had a
deformed foot that was broken by a cow stepping on it when he was a
young teen. It happened not long after his brother Bertie had died
during WW1 in 1918, and nobody seemed to be able to cope with a son
with a mere broken foot. There were two soldiers convalescing at
Swalland and two other soldiers who had been transferred to the
‘Labour Corp' and had been sent to work at the farm. One of them
helped bandage up my granddad, but his mother, my great grandmother,
had stopped coming out of her bedroom, apart from helping one of the
convalescing soldiers who had been burned I believe.
So, to my Granddad, his parents were not at all sympathetic towards
him at the time, and it wasn’t helped a few years later when my
Great granddad knocked down a young boy who had run out into his
car’s path. The boy had come running out from Cow Lane, Wareham and
ran across the road without looking. The boy very sadly subsequently
died; he was only five years old. The poor little boy had hit his
head on the kerb near to St Martin’s Church, and the small milk-can
that he’d been carrying got wedged between the hub and wheel at the
front of the car.
According to witnesses’ statements - one witness, being the
passenger that William Ellis Ford had picked up at a pub at Lychett
(close to where William’s brother Thomas was farming at the time) -
and after a couple of test drives undertaken by the coroner, it was
established that he had only been driving at about 10 miles per
hour. A policeman also said that he had smelt his breath and as far
as he could tell he wasn’t drunk. I reckon there’s a chance that
seeing as both of them, Mr Ford and the Policeman, were in the
Wareham Lodge of ‘The Funny Handshake Brigade’ AKA Masons, it is
possible that he was just saying that.
My great grandfather William Ellis Ford paid for the boy’s funeral
and flowers and attended it too, but according to my granddad he was
never quite the same man after that, and never drove again. He got
one of the Curtis men to drive for him after the accident, and he
began to look gaunt and thin, eventually dying several years later
from lung cancer in 1933, supposedly a highly respected Dorset
Farmer. But I can’t help wondering, when looking at the glorifying
newspaper report on his death and funeral, if the members of the
Hodge family of Cow Lane hated every word that was written about the
man that had killed their little boy a few years beforehand.
Now back to Granddad’s deformed broken foot at Swalland farm and the
soldier who had bandaged up his foot. That soldier eventually
managed to persuade Granddad’s mother, Louisa Ford nee Hunt to call
in the Doctor, or more likely it was Nell Moss, my Granddad’s older
cousin who acted as Nanny come house maid. She had lived with the
Ford family for as long as my Granddad could remember, and previous
to Nell Moss (related via the Hunt side) The Nanny come housemaid
was a member of the Fooks family, who was related via the Ford side.
By that time his foot had set all wonky and twisted; on top of that
he was so bow-legged that you could have bowled a couple of pigs
side-by side through his legs and his fingers were all knotted up,
swollen and gnarled.
His main diet that I recall him eating during the daytime was 'Oxo
Slops' (an Oxo beef stock cube dissolved in about three quarters of
a pint of boiling water placed in a china pudding basin that
contained broken up stale bread soaking in it). When he wasn’t
eating ‘Oxo Slops’, he was usually sucking on a Hack’s cough sweet,
leaving a trail of the aroma of them as he went along, which led to
my dad calling him “Wold ‘ack” in an affectionate way that seemed to
amuse the pair of them.
I recall one night, well, the early hours of the morning, Granddad
had set off early from Bovington I guess. He arrived at our house
where he usually stopped off for a cuppa and would leave his
push-bike, occasionally resting his head on the kitchen table for a
brief snooze. Then crossing our garden and passing through the gate
at the bottom leading to ‘Faraway’ to tend to the Newton’s Garden
first, before popping back to our place for his 'Oxo Slops' dinner.
Then down the track a little and through the kissing gate (gone
since the 1990s) at ‘Downside’ and towards Jo Lawrence’s large plot
just below Happy Cottage near to the old stile (long gone too) and
the path that led from London Row, towards the upper path to Winspit.
It was still dark outside when Granddad turned up in the early
morning; Mum and Dad were asleep in their relatively new
elevation/dormer, and bedroom. My bedroom was in the old utility
room and my bed was positioned under the new-stairs next to the
stone wall and wooden panel on the other side of the kitchen. I’d
heard granddad come in, and he had been talking to our dog, ‘Yoko
Ono’. I popped to bathroom, passing Granddad as he continued petting
our dog, whilst warming his hands up at the same time I expect, and
as I was coming back down through the long hallway, there in my
‘bedroom’ kitchen doorway was Dad with his by then defunct shot-gun.
My granddad shouted out, “Reggie, Reggie, it’s me, don’t shoot,
don’t shoot, it’s me George, Old Hack, don’t shoot me!”
Dad hadn’t used his gun for real for many years before that, which
was a good thing, as Dad seemed as horrified and shaken up as my
Granddad was at the time.
Granddad Ford’s Ancestors were from all over Purbeck and Dorset;
many of the Fords seem to have found it difficult to keep still for
very long. The Methodist minister who jointly founded the Methodist
school and preached at the Methodist Church at Wareham I think, was
John Ford, buried in the Methodist plot at Wareham St Mary’s Church
Yard. Those Fords (my direct ancestors) spent their earlier years at
Owermoigne, where they were dairy farmers and breeders, and sheep
breeders, as well as Blue Vinney and Cottage Cheese producers.
The not-too-distant Ford relatives spread out a bit; some went off
towards Lychett and Upton areas. Others went to Steeple and Creech,
East Stoke, Arne, Holme Lane, Bradle, Church Knowle, Kimmeridge Farm
and Swalland, Woodyhyde, with a brief period at Winspit Cottage, as
well as having Woodyhyde at the same time. A few shot off to Canada
and to the U.S.A. (especially members of the Woodyhyde and Winspit
line) and another branch rented a slot at Quarr Farm’s dairy, and
had been at Blashenwell, and across the way at Church Knowle.
Later, that particular branch (my family’s branch) had had Swalland
at Kimmeridge and Manor Farm dairy at Tarrant Monkton. They weren’t
well off though but took advantage of vacant end-of lease farms and
dairies or helped out family members, including loaning cattle and
sheep to each-other. There were a couple of them who were Fishermen
of Studland and further along the coast nearer to Melcombe and Wyke
Regis, and possibly the Ford line had started somewhere near
Abbotsbury.
My Granddad George Ellis Ford recalled the times when during two
droughts (roughly around 1919 and again in 1922/23) he assisted his
father William Ellis Ford with walking the cattle and sheep from
Swalland farm to Wareham River so that they could drink; they had to
await their turn, as several other farmers had had to do the same.
He said that one of the main reasons for Wareham causeway being laid
and properly reinforced was for that very reason, and a few farmers
contributed towards its general upkeep in the early days, mainly so
that the farmers could drive their herds and flocks there to drink,
or to the market at Wareham and to Woodbury Fair.
By the time that he was involved though, cattle and sheep were often
transported by train or lorry/truck to Dorchester Market. He didn’t
mention anything about the routes taken to get them there before the
railway, however, he did mention a relative (not sure which branch)
who drove his entire flock of sheep, and returned to then drive his
herd of Cattle to the outskirts of London, I think setting off from
Blandford. And that relative being one of the first market stall
holders originating from the Dorset region and opening up a butcher
and a grocery store somewhere in the region close to Smithfield with
another stall in Portobello Road. He did mention another market and
street, but I can’t recall which now, but the same family were still
running it, along with their shop at the turn of this century I
believe.
Worth Matravers farmers didn’t really have to worry about droughts
so much, as they had the benefit of the many springs around here.
Those in Langton and Herston would sometimes take their cattle and
sheep towards Ulwell at Washpond Lane or towards a wider part of
Corfe River.
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