A knackerman is a person who collects dead, dying and injured farm animals and horses, then sells the meat or hides.
Jack Waterfield ran the Three Holes knackers yard in Mudd’s Drove in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Waterfields lived between the two sets of council houses, in a converted railway carriage, with an open water filled pit behind it, called Tointon’s pit. (why it was called Tointon’s pit is anyone’s guess!)
The knacker’s yard itself was a piggery, but people also took their dead animals there. There were two large copper cauldrons – the dead meat was cooked in one and then the other, and fed through a slide in the wall, mixed up and fed to the pigs.
Harradine of March then took over the knackery business and Walter Hunter Rowe’s fruit orchards were planted over the site.
