Cabot Knewell, Family Butcher At Graham House, Boxford

A Memory of Boxford.

Cabot Knewell, with wife Joan (nee Joan I Smith), was the master butcher at Graham House, 6 Broad Street, Boxford, from the mid 1940s to the 1970s. To the right is the Fleece. To the left, Riddlestons stationery, now a café. (The river opposite is the River Box - not the Brett; the shop front of the butchers read: C. Knewell, not C.J. Newell)

After WW2, to supplement income, Cabot and Joan set up a fish and chip shop on the left shop front; the right continued to be the butchers.

Most weeks, Walter Bowers helped Cabot purchase pigs and a bullock from Bury St Edmunds market; these were delivered in a lorry and then killed in the slaughter house to the rear of the property, adjoining the kitchen !

Cabot and Joan later lived at the bungalow 'Ramree' off Clubbs Lane, named after an island off the Burma coast, where Cabot served during WW2

Joan was born in Polstead but was brought up, with her 6 sisters and brother Arthur 'Artie' by her father Arthur-Marshall Smith and mother Hilda at 'Lavender Dene', now 'Vermont' the pink house at the narrow part of Stone Street; part of the building included a smithy. A few doors down was Grimwoods shop, the other being in the village centre.

Arthur-Marshall was converted whilst at Polstead and proclaimed 'the good news' The family enjoyed attending the Congregational Chapel in Swan Street as well as other places of worship and especially Rayden Salvation Army; Marshall sometimes preached.

Cabot was born in New Zealand but was brought up at Great Horkesley's butchers.

Cabot & Joan had two children: Clive and Susan.