A361_through_Knowle_on_the_way_to_Braunton_-_geograph

Knowle is a village near

Braunton Braunton is a large village, civil parish, ecclesiastical parish and former manor in Devon. The village is situated west of Barnstaple. It is one of the largest villages in Devon with a population at the 2021 census of 10,217 people. There ...

located on the

A361 road The A361 is an A class road in southern England, which at is the longest three-digit A road in the UK. History When first designated in 1922, the A361 ran from Taunton (Somerset) to Banbury (Oxfordshire). It was later extended west through ...

between

Ilfracombe Ilfracombe ( ) is a seaside resort and civil parish on the North Devon coast, England, with a small harbour surrounded by cliffs. The parish stretches along the coast from the 'Coastguard Cottages' in Hele Bay toward the east and along t ...

and Barnstaple in North Devon, England. It is in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

of Braunton. Knowle is situated near to the Iron Age fortification of Knowle Hill Castle.

History

The number of inhabitants expanded considerably in the 1960s with the building of a large number of

bungalows A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is either single-story or has a second story built into a sloping roof (usually with dormer windows), and may be surrounded by wide verandas. The first house in England that was classified as a b ...

which nearly doubled the housing stock. At the time there was a push for people from the Midlands to relocate to ease the housing issues under a policy known as

overspill In nonstandard analysis, a branch of mathematics, overspill (referred to as ''overflow'' by Goldblatt (1998, p. 129)) is a widely used proof technique. It is based on the fact that the set of standard natural numbers N is not an internal su ...

. The estate of about 50 bungalows were built by the local builder 'Jimmy' James Dennis whose had all his own trades and workers. He also ran his own sawmills and forestry to create the wood. Jimmy lived on the small hill above the new houses towards the C of E. He had built a cistern on the opposite hill, fed by a pipe laid into a stream from the top of the hill right across the village to his house. Knowle had two churches; C of E at the top of the hill (closed) and a Methodist hall in the middle of the village. In the 1960s there was a small shop by the main road, separate post office, garage and a pub. Called the 'Ebrington Arms' excluding the pub. The rest have been merged into the garage. In the 70s the pub was changed with a single room from each side of a central front door and a bar that extended into each room. In the 1980s the pub was extensively modified to cater for food services. About 0.5 miles from the village, at

Winsham Winsham is a village and civil parish south-east of Chard and from Crewkerne, in the South Somerset district of Somerset, England. The parish, which has a population of approximately 750 residents living in some 335 households, includes the ham ...

, there were three farms who maintained the fields with arable and dairy stocks. A small holding just outside of the village provide rabbits as a pet or for food. The village shop was run in the 60s and 70s. As people didn't have supermarkets or many cars, the small shop, the local farmer, the small holder, and peoples own gardens, provided most of the necessities. For other items it was a bus ride to

, Barnstaple, and all the way to Pannier Market especially in

cattle market In economics, a market is a composition of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations or infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering ...

day. In the village, also lives A.H. Slee, a published historian who had written several books. And Mr Bray, a former tech teacher who worked in a school in Barnstaple.

Events

The village come together throughout the year often as a result of the local Women's Institute. To create the lorry floats for the children to enter the Braunton Carnival Parade, thousands of paper flowers was made over the years to decorate those floats.

References

{{authority control Villages in Devon Braunton