The Village Voice Oct Nov 2018

BRINGING HISTORY HOME
Since launching the Milford-on-Sea Historical
Record Society’s website
www.milfordhistory.org.uk, we have found that
the House Histories page has been particularly
popular. It contains short accounts of properties
in the village and many of them can be seen by
the QR signs where they are displayed. The
Village Voice has invited us to provide some
more detailed histories of houses in Milford,
both large and small. We shall start with a
smaller house at No.46 High Street.
Polly’s Pantry
On March 1 st 1676 P. Rudsby of Winchester
received £16 from William Thorn, blacksmith, of
Milford for a 1000 year lease on the property
known as Yatemans. It was described as a
tenement or dwelling house, with the barn and
garden plot which was bounded by John Gritt’s
land on the west, by John Hutchins land on the
east, by the Kings Highway on the north and by
the river on the south.
By 1875, Edmund Cole who now owned the
property had died intestate and his wife, Louisa,
was granted letters of administration. At her
death in 1907, Letters of Administration were
granted to her son, Frank Cole, who sold the
residue of the lease to Edward Knight for £295.
This effectively became a freehold property by
virtue of ‘the Conveyance & Law of Property’
Act 1881.
The property had a frontage of about 35 feet
bounded on the west by another property
agreed to be purchased by Edward Knight and
on the south by the Danestream.
It would appear that in 1912, Edward took out a
mortgage to pay for this and another property.
The mortgage was with the Trustees of the
Southampton & West Hants District No. 121 of
the Independent Order of Rechabites [Salford
Unity] Friendly Society.*
In 1919, Cecil Lewis Knight bought the property
from his brother, Edward, for his grocery and
confectionery business which is today Polly’s
Pantry at No. 46 Milford High Street.
When the Cole family sold the property to
Edward in 1907, the agreement was needed
from all the members of the family who were
alive and were 21 or over. Edmund and Louisa
had thirteen children and by the date of this
sale, five of them had died and one, Louisa’s son
George, was not available, nor was it known if
he was still alive. In 1859 he had emigrated to
Queensland, Australia, but he kept in contact
with his mother, Louisa, until 6 January 1883. In
his last letter to her, he said that he had been
wounded in a fight with natives. As he had not
been heard of for 22 years he was presumed to
be dead, and it was agreed that as long as he
had some protection, Edward could go ahead.
The Cole family agreed to give a covenant
indemnifying him if any claim should be made
by George Cole or any of his heirs or successors.
It would be interesting to see what would
happen if somebody did turn up!
The MOSHRS website is a core part of its
Bringing History Home project supported by the
Heritage Lottery Fund and Milford-on-Sea Parish
Council. The next edition of Village Voice will
feature a history of The White House.
https://www.milfordhistory.org.uk/content/
history/buildings-and-monuments/buildings-andmonuments
*[The Independent Order of Rechabites is a friendly
society founded in England in 1835 as part of the wider
British temperance movement to promote total abstinence
from alcoholic beverages. Always well connected
in upper society and involved in financial matters, it
gradually transformed into a financial institution]
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