Joe Knott, 1986

Simon_K has added a photo to the pool:

1986: Cambridge

My grandfather Joe Knott cupping a cigarette.

Vincent Helgia "Joe" Knott was born on the 15th of February 1908 in Dartford in Kent. Thus, he was the only one of my four grandparents to be born outside of Cambridgeshire.

Vincent Helgia was always known as Joe Knott. His parents were William and Mary Ann Knott, née Waters. They married on the 3rd December 1892 at St Mary's church in Strood, Rochester, a short walk from William's parents' house in Grange Road.

After their marriage, William and Mary Ann lived in a terraced house in Tobin Villas, Cuxton Road, Strood, where their first two children Daisy and Gladys were born in 1893 and 1895. By 1897 they had moved the short distance to 12, London Road, where their third daughter Pansy was born. Unfortunately, she died at the age of one. They were still at the London Road address for the 1901 census, but when their eldest son William was born the following year they were living back in Cuxton Road, but further out, near to the cemetery.

At some point in the next six years they moved some 15 miles west to Dartford, because my grandfather was born there in 1908.

Their parents were near at hand: Mary Ann's parents kept the One Bell beer house in Wilmington, just outside of Dartford, at the time Joe was born in the town, and his eldest sister lived with and worked for them. My aunt, Joe's daughter, has told me that when her father was very young he used to be put on the bar of the One Bell to sing to the customers, and that this was how he acquired the name Joe. William's parents kept a small shop in Grange Road in the Frindsbury district of Rochester.

By the time of the birth of William and Mary Ann's last child, Iris, in 1910, and the 1911 census, my grandfather's family were living in Greenhithe, to the east of Dartford, but they seem to have returned to the Strood area of Rochester soon after; by 1914 they were living at 96 Temple Street in the centre of Strood, a short walk from William's grandparents' shop in Grange Road. They were still there for the marriage of Joe's sister in 1919, and at the same address in the 1925 Kelly's Directory of Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham.

The Knott family probably lived in the Temple Street house throughout the time Joe was growing up. Temple Street was bombed during World War II, and demolished in the 1960s. It is now the site of a Tesco superstore. All of my grandfather's sisters who lived to adulthood were married in Strood.

In the early 1930s, Joe Knott left Kent looking for work. He worked on road-building projects in Yorkshire where he met Arthur Page, the brother of his future wife Phyllis Page. 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 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.

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. They moved to 20 Fletcher Road on the new Gainsborough Estate in Ipswich, where their first child and only daughter was born.

They returned to Ely in 1935, where they would remain. Joe Knott rarely spoke about his family in Kent, and my father and his brothers and sister seem to know almost nothing about them. Joe and Phyllis lived at 25 Willow Walk off of Waterside, where my father and his brothers were born. The house is now demolished. 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 worked for British Sugar until he retired in the early 1970s. 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. For a while, Joe and Phyllis owned a caravan in Heacham, and enjoyed holidays on the Norfolk coast.

Joe is remembered for his fondness for the horses, and his friendships with prominent sportsmen. He outlived my other grandparents, lived to hold my son as a baby, and died in Ely in 1996 at the age of 87.