Brook Hollow

Brook Hollow, Station Road/The Town

A building, probably a farmhouse, had stood here since the 18th Century and is depicted on the Award Map of 1789. In one of the walls there is a stone bearing the date 1618. Like Church Farm, it was held by the Tempest family, first as copyhold and then freehold. The freehold was sold by the Tempest Trust to William Walters in 1932. 

William Walters and his wife Eliza farmed here in the 19th Century. William also called himself a wheelwright.  He died in 1856 and his wife ran the farm until she died in 1882, calling herself a cow keeper or farmer. The Walters had seven children, four of whom became wheelwrights, joiners, coffin makers, bakers and undertakers.  One of them. Thomas Michael Walters, was a railway clerk who became Chairman of the School Board for 30 years and father-in-law to W.H.Grocock, the Headmaster of the school from 1892 to 1926.

John Walters (1842-1899) called himself a wheelwright and joiner and his wife Emily, like her mother-in-law before her, called herself a cow keeper. John and Emily had 4 children. Their eldest, William, took over as a coffin maker and joiner and ironmonger. Their second son, Frederick, became a railway clerk and a nursery-man. Their daughters became a Clerk and a Dressmaker.

William Walters (1875 – 1954) married Emily Muir in 1903.  They had two sons. The eldest, Harvey (Harry,) became a Carpenter and Joiner like his father and grandfather and, by the 1930s, was living at “The Farm” with his parents and brother.  The second son, William, took over the farming as a Dairy Farmer, though by then there was little land and only a few cows. The family provided coffins for the whole village for 200 years, in the early 20th Century the coffins were transported around the village on a barrow consisting of a wooden frame on two bicycle wheels. Local people recorded how they felt that Emily was “measuring them up” for a coffin whenever they met her in the village. William died in 1954.

Harvey Walters married Ethel Rains in 1940 and died in 1965 at No 11 The Town.  By then the house had been split into two. One part of the house and the barns were sold to Sid and Doreen Ottowell and is known as No1 Brook Hollow and in 2021 was taken over by the Slater family.  William Walters died in 1975, with the address given as No 28 Station Road. That part of the house is now known as No 11, The Town.