A 'son' of Sherington
Richard was born on in Sherington on 24th September 1831 and baptised (spelt Dolton) on 28th December that year at Newport Pagnell Independent Meeting House (where his mother was a member) by Rev. Thomas Palmer Bull. His parents were Richard Dolton (b. Sherington 1800 whose family is believed to have come from 'Doltons Farm' in Woburn), and Ruth Joyce.
His widowed mother is shown on the 1841 census as a lace worker but she was a troubled soul who struggled to provide for her young son. By 1850 she had been taken into care and was moved to Stone Asylum where she died thirteen years later. Richard stayed on as an Ag Lab (agricultural labourer) until after the 1851 census when he left the village to seek work in London, married Mary Hopson, and had ten children.
Richard is the Great x 2 grandfather of our present member Howard Dalton from Poole, Dorset. By strange coincidence Norman Arnold chanced on a postcard of Sherington Knoll sent in 1904 to Howard's grandfather Albert, then living in Harrow Wealdstone, Middlesex! The reverse of the postcard says "show this picture to your pater" and therefore appears to indicate the approximate site of the Dolton home in Sherington.
On the 1796 Enclosure Map, the building marked with the cross is probably plot 166, owned at that time by James Simco. The adjacent plot, 169, is in the name of James Joice, a possible relative of Richard's mother, Ruth Joyce. This cottage (since demolished and now the site of Haynes Haulage) was later the home of the Keech family and "Stumper" Wright.
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| Postcard marked with an “x” top left | Cottage on the Knoll, home of the Keech family |