From “The Exeter Road The Story of the West of England Highway 1899” Charles G Harper 1899.

The bill was introduced in February 1824 and was enacted in April of that year. The sole commissioner was John Baverstock Knight. It is not immediately obvious as to why John Martin was involved in the inclosure as Tarent Hinton, as it was then called, is some considerable distance from Evershot. When Martin worked at such a distance it was usually for some one special, such as the Earl of Ilchester, but he at least was not a landowner in the parish. His ties with Baverstock Knight offer one explanation although how the two met is also not known. The other reason for his involvement was that the Lord of the Manor [in 1839 at least] was James John Farquharson. Born in 1785 he was, in the words of a letter written at the time of his death in 1871, “the backbone of Conservatism in politics.” He was also extremely rich, the 1851 census shows him living, at Langton Long near Blandford with his wife, son and seventeen servants. He was rich enough to establish his own troupe of Yeomanry, comprising some seventy men. Known as “The Squire”, Farquharson’s cavalry came to the fore in 1832 “when Lord John Russell brought in his Reform Bill” and the Squire “stood forward with the landed gentry, clergy and tenant farmers to stem the torrent of Democracy…in Dorsetshire particularly and well night revolutionised the county.” Martin who kept a diary in 1832 mentions none of what the writer recalled, “Those still alive who witnessed, as I did, the ritos, burning ricks, and battering down the dwellings of any person the mob thought opposed to Russell Reform, can convince the present generation of lax politicians that, however trivial they may now deem the right of the period, we w ere within an ace of being under mob rule, and should have been had not Mr Farquharson with the yeomanry stopped it.” Mr Farquharson himself lost three ricks in the disturbances so we can imagine he was not disposed to smile on the prospect of reform.

Martin was of course closely involved with the Yeomanry from the earliest times and would have known Farquharson well, indeed in 1852 whilst on Permanent duty at Blandford he,

The inclosures of John Baverstock Knight were better recorded in newspaper adverts than many other commissioners. There was a flurry of activity in July 1824 at Tarrant Hinton. We know that he held his first meeting on Monday 5^th July 1824 at the house of Thomas Fish ‘known by the name or sign of the White Bear situate in Blandford Forum’ when the proprietors had to choose a BANKER for the inclosure. We know that next day he was attending ‘the north corner of Eastbury Park wall in the adjoining parish of Tarrant Gunville’ at midday, in order to undertake a perambulation and on the 7^th he was back at the pub holding his second meeting where the proprietors had to present their various claims. Thomas Fish can never have been busier as we may assume that between 1824 and the next official meeting on the 24^th October 1826, there would have been other less formal meetings held as was the commissioners custom. At this meeting he laid out the roads, there is no mention of John Martin but we learn that the clerk to the inclosure was John Jennings. Finally on the 24^th August 1827 he met at the White Bear to read the final award and get it signed off by the proprietors. The entries for Tarrant Hinton [and Bincombe] add little new to our story but are shown for completeness.

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