1. ‘Docker Hill’

Docker Hill Farm is situated in the middle of Monkton, on the right of the road leading down to the Recreation ground. I think it covers about 300 acres [about 120 hectares]. It has only been called such since about the middle of the 1970’s. Prior to that it was part of the farm owned by Mr Trevor Willett and known as Parsonage Farm. Mr Peter Dyas became the tenant when the farm was sold.

If you walk the farm track, over the railway and on towards the Abbots Wall, the next to last field on your left before the wall is Docker Hill.

If we go back to the late 1960’s early 1970’s, you would have seen the ruins of a small brick-built house on the top of the hill. The marshes looked very different then.  All of Monkton marshes were under grass and the field lay-out was very different then, as it is today.

The house, when it was still standing, housed the Shepherd and his family. No running water or electricity. A Mr Love was the last Shepherd to live there. My mother went to school with his children [I don’t know how many] in the 1930’s. Every day they would walk to school in all weather, changing out of their wellington boots and into shoes in the winter, and according to her they hardly ever missed a day.

Where the name comes from has been long forgotten, it may have been named after the first Shepherd to live there. All fields had names at one time. The farmer who now works the farm probably only knows the fields by their acreage size.

Terry Marsh

Originally published in the Monkton News (September 2022).