There are two explanations for the name of this town, both mentioned by its historian, Henry Green, in the 1850s. One is that there was once an old woman who sold nuts for her living, and when dying asked to be buried with a bag of them under her head. This was done, but she found this pillow so uncomfortable that, after turning over in her coffin and finding the other side no better, she one night clambered out of her grave, emptied the bag, cracked all the nuts against her gravestone, and ate them all but one, which she dropped without realizing it. She then refolded the bag to use as a pillow, got back into her coffin, and has slept there peacefully ever since. But a fine hazel sprouted from the nut she dropped on her grave. Henry Green, telling this tale in 1859, says that there really had been a tree growing from a grave here; by the time he was writing only its shattered stem remained, but he himself had once plucked a leaf from its branches, which was seen as ‘an undeniable witness’ that all this was true.
The other story is better linked to the place-name, for this in fact means ‘Knut’s ford‘, Knut being a common Danish personal name. The legend naturally assumes that this must mean King Canute—who, to the English, is the only famous Knut—though it could of course have been any of the Viking settlers of the area. One day, according to this story, King Canute was crossing the river by a ford at this point, when he stopped to shake sand from his shoe, just as a wedding party happened to be passing. He kindly wished the couple as many children as there were grains of sand in his shoe. This not only explains how Knut’s Ford got its name, but also is allegedly the origin of the town’s custom of making patterns of coloured sand outside a bride’s house.