Introduction
Frank Eastment was a smallholder at Hill End from around 1907 to 1924. After marrying his first wife, he left the village, but her early death prompted him to return to Hardington. He married again, this time to a woman significantly older than he was, possibly to provide care for his young son. Following her death, he entered a third marriage, which brought him three more children. However, by the mid-1920s, Frank experienced financial difficulties and was forced to give up his smallholding, later becoming a gardener.
Early life and family background
Frank was born on 11 January 1868 at Hardington Mandeville, the eldest son of James and Thirza Jane Eastment. Their older daughter died in infancy, and seven other children were born after Frank. The 1871 and 1881 censuses recorded the family living close to the New Inn, on the side nearest the church. James worked as a farm labourer, and by 1881, Frank himself was employed as a farm boy at the age of thirteen.
By 1891, the family had moved to a four-room cottage at Pendomer, and Frank worked as a farm labourer. They later moved to East Coker, where Frank’s mother died in May 1894 from heart failure at the age of fifty. Frank registered her death.[1] After her death, the family returned to Hardington, where James died in 1902.
First marriage
In 1896, Frank married Harriet Prior of East Coker. Harriet was the daughter of a farm labourer and had spent her childhood at Seavington St Mary. The couple lived at Barwick, where their son Arthur Francis was born in January 1897, and later moved to Yetminster. Harriet died there in March 1899 from phthisis asthenia (tuberculosis) at the age of twenty-two.[2]
Second marriage
Frank returned to Hardington with his young son and, in 1899, married Mary Ann Delamont, a widow eight years older than him with two children: William George and Annie Eliza. They established their home at Cottage 333, a four-room property, on the side of the New Inn away from the church.
In 1901, Frank was employed as a cowman. Soon afterwards, he began renting land to keep livestock, including pigs. He advertised seven-week-old pigs for sale in July 1902 and a sow and nine young ones in June 1903.[3]
In about 1907, the family moved to Hill End.[4] By 1911, Frank was working as a carter for a building contractor, suggesting that he combined wage labour with small-scale farming. By that time, Mary Ann’s two children had left home, and Stephen Allcock, a former railway platelayer, was boarding with the family.
Mary Ann’s son married Florence Frances May White, the daughter of George White, a Hardington builder, in 1910 and initially settled in North Lane, while Annie moved to Repton, where she worked as a housemaid at Repton School. She may have obtained this position through Henry Vassall, the bursar and housemaster, who had lived at Hardington Rectory as a child. Both George’s marriage and Annie’s employment suggest that the Eastment family was likely regarded as respectable.
Local newspapers provide occasional glimpses of Frank’s activities as a smallholder. In December 1915, he was summoned by the police for moving a pig on 4 November, contrary to the Swine Fever Order of 1908. He admitted the offence, stating that he moved the pig without a thought, and was fined 9s.[5] At the 1915 Christmas Poultry Show, he won first prize for six fat chickens, and at the Yeovil Christmas Fat Stock Shows in 1920 and 1921, he won a prize for a fat beast.[6]
The First World War had a significant impact on Frank’s family. His stepson and at least two of his brothers served in the war, with his brother, James, being killed.
In July 1918, Mary Ann died from heart disease at the age of fifty-eight. Her daughter, Annie Eliza Sanders, came from Repton to be with her and registered her death.[7] The certificate recorded Frank’s occupation as a farmer. Annie, who was married to a civil servant, may also have paid for Mary Ann’s large gravestone in Hardington churchyard.
Third marriage
In 1919, Frank married Edith May Jenkins, a single woman from Cardiff with one young daughter. Frank was fifty-one, and Edith was twenty-two. They went on to have three children together.
Frank continued to run his smallholding. The catalogue for the Portman estate sale of October 1920 recorded him occupying 6 acres 2 roods and 37 perches. Although he did not buy the holding as the sitting tenant, he may have continued to rent it. The rate book for 31 December 1923 listed him as the occupier of a cottage and 2 acres, 3 roods and 35 perches of land at Hill End owned by a syndicate and 14 acres 0 roods 29 perches of land owned by Viscount Portman.
Financial difficulties and later life
By February 1924, Frank had fallen behind with his rent, and an auction was scheduled for 14 February unless he paid his rent beforehand. The items listed for sale included four dairy cows, a calf, a turkey, about sixty head of poultry, a horse, a spring trap and two ricks of hay. The sale notice referred to the holding as Hill End Farm.[8] The threatened sale suggests that his position as a smallholder had become financially unsustainable, possibly reflecting the wider difficulties faced by small farmers in the post-war agricultural downturn.
The sale appears to have marked the end of his attempt to maintain an independent holding. By 1939, he was working as a gardener at East Chelborough, marking a return to wage labour. His death was registered in the Bridport district in 1949 at the age of eighty-one. Edith, who did not remarry, survived him by thirty-eight years, dying in the Yeovil registration district in late 1986 or early 1987 at the age of eighty-nine.
References
[1] Death certificate of Thirza Jane Eastment.
[2] Death certificate of Harriet Eastment.
[3] Western Gazette, 18 July 1902, p.7; 12 June 1903, p.7.
[4] Hardington voters’ lists.
[5] Western Chronicle, 3 December 1915, p. 7.
[6] Western Gazette, 17 December 1915, p. 7; Western Chronicle, 17 December 1915, p. 2; Western Chronicle, 10 December 1920, p. 14; Western Chronicle, 9 December 1921, p. 9.
[7] Death certificate of Mary Ann Eastment. The certificate recorded her age as 56.
[8] Western Chronicle 8 February 1924, p. 2.
