The day after Christmas, December 26th 1912, John Albert Bass married Florence Squire in the Parish Church of Brendon.
John (known as Jack) Bass is remembered in his family as being very tall – 6’7” – and worked most of his life in farming. Prior to marrying Florence Squire, Jack was working for Robert French at Cheriton Farm, Brendon. The census record, from 1911, shows that Jack is single and a ‘farm servant.’
The term ‘farm servant’ – rather than agricultural labourer – is interesting as it applies to young, unmarried men who would have a 6-to-12-month contract, with their board and lodging provided in the farmhouse or on the farmstead where they worked. It is something of an old-fashioned designation to still be used in 1911 as it harks back to earlier agricultural days. An online article covering this topic can be found at The Farm Servant | SpringerLink (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-31674-5_2)
It seems likely that Jack’s work status as a ‘farm servant’ meant the couple would need to find somewhere to live after their marriage and the birth of their first child, John Albert Bass, in 1913, puts them in Hoar Oak Cottage. Family memories and documentary evidence would indicate that Florence’s mother and father – Mr and Mrs Squire of Cheriton – rented Hoar Oak Cottage from the Fortescue Estate for Jack and Florrie and baby John to live in. The Fortescue Estate held Hoar Oak Cottage from 1897 to the 1950s and either let it out or used it to house their shepherds running the Hoar Oak and Chains sheep herdings.
The image below is from the 1915 Fortescue Land Agent record of the valuation of various farms and cottages and shows that the tenant in 1915 of Hoar Oak Cottage and several acres of surrounding agricultural land was Mr R Squire.
Further records from the Fortescue Land Agent’s papers held in the Devon Record Office (Ref:1262M/0/E/5) backs this up as they record that in 1915 Mr and Mrs Squire saw the Land Agent with the intention to ‘give up’ Hoar Oak Cottage and ‘sell the grass’- presumably to the Fortescue Estate.
Whether Jack worked for the Fortescues as a shepherd is not recorded but it seems unlikely as Florrie’s parents appear to be straightforward tenants and this fits with family memories that Mr and Mrs Squire rented the cottage for Jack and Florrie to live in.
One of Jack and Florrie’s descendants, Gillian Curtis, shared with The Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage a tragedy which befell the couple in 1922. By then they had four children, John 11, Audrey 7, Frederick 3 and a baby, Dorothy just 10 months. They were living in Cross Street, Lynton. The youngest three children all died in October 1922 of an acute gastric infection. At the time, the eldest son John was a patient in the Lynton Cottage Hospital (built 1873) recovering from a fractured leg and was, as a consequence, spared the same fate as his younger siblings.
The item below, from The Western Morning News of 13th October 1922, reports the sad incident and the assumption was that the cause of the deaths was ‘poisoned milk.’ Elsewhere in newspapers of the time can be found discussions of the need to promote the sterilization of milk and it is likely the Bass tragedy helped push forward legislation enforcing the mandatory pasteurization of milk.
The three Bass children were buried in Lynton Churchyard. Jack and Florrie had one more child, Vera, born after this terrible incident.
In the following years, Jack and Florrie Bass lived in Barbrook and Lynton where they ran lodging houses and a Bed & Breakfast and took in children sent to Lynton during the Second World War. They were active in local charity activities, particularly around raising money for Lynton Cottage Hospital. Jack died in 1951 and Florrie in 1971. They are both buried in Lynton – Lea Road – Cemetery.
Thank you to Gillian Curtis and Vic Bass for sharing information about and photos of Jack and Florrie Bass.