Portrait of a young lady of the Knight family, half-length, in a white dress with fur stole, a golden locket in her left hand

The Knight family came to prominence in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries, with furnaces at Flaxley in the Forest of Dean, Willey in Shropshire and Cookley and Whittington in the Stour valley. They formed part of the 'Ironworks in Partnership', a group which comprised of several ironmasters, a major force in the British charcoal industry of the period.