Norton Court Estate Cottage - No 17

As can be seen on the following map extract, at the time the Inclosures came to Norton in 1807, cottages No 17 and 18 would have been found in Plot No 73 which was a house and garden of 1 rod, 16 perches, owned by Edward Webb of the Norton Court Estate.  There is no suggestion that the property was split into two residences as it is now.

It is not known when this became two cottages or if it was always so and it has not been positively identified until 1908 when 'Berry' was paying £8 10s  to the Norton Court Estate at the Lady Day Rentals.  This would have been Henry George Berry, wife Annie and children.  In 1901 they had been living at Down Hatherley but their son Ernest Victor was baptised at St Mary’s in 1904 at which time the register records the family were ‘of Norton’ so they were probably at No 17 then.  Henry was employed as a waggoner on a farm.  On 31 March 1909 Norton School Registers record that their son had been in an accident at the Boddington Harriers horse races; 

“A bad accident yesterday at the races.  Richard Berry (III) was trampled on and his leg broken by a runaway horse. The boy was taken to the Tewkesbury Hospital”.  

I would estimate this photo of No 17 was taken in the early 1900s.

In 1911 the Berry family were living in a four room cottage at The Green which agrees with a later description of No 17.  In 1921 Henry Berry was employed as a horseman (carter) for Herbert Archer at Green Farm.  Wife Ann was still here as was son Richard Lewis Berry who was employed as a porter for the Great Western Railway at Ebbw Vale, Monmouth.  In 1924 Ann Berry was still living at No 17 when she died and was buried at St Mary’s.  Henry George was living in Great Western Road, Gloucester, when he died in 1928 but he was also buried at St Mary’s.

Albert Alfred and Nellie Blake were likely the next occupants of the cottage and were there in 1928 when their 2 days old son Cecil Derrick was buried at St Mary’s.  The Blakes later lived at a number of other estate cottages around the village.

The cottage residents are then uncertain until 1939 when Edward John, a farm carter, and Blodwen B Griffiths were there.

By 1947 Ernest Thomas and Kathleen Mary Prosser had arrived and were to stay here until at least 1956 around which time they moved to No 2 Norton Farm Cottages and their son Leonard, after marriage, moved to Estate Cottage No 8. 

In June 1952 the Norton Court Estate was sold by auction and No 17 was included; “Passage with cupboard, living room with fireplace, oven and sham, back kitchen with furnace and two bedrooms”.  It also had "a coal house, pigscott, EC, and garden".  Gas had been installed and council water had recently been connected.

The following few years show a high turnover in residents.  In 1962 we find Geoffrey F and Kathleen M Harrington, in 1963 Elsie L Stevens, and in 1966 Christopher Roger and Marion Bernice Spiers who later moved to The Lodge almost opposite.

[2002]

Peter A and Elizabeth A Hooper were living here in 2002.