Text 49, 164 rader
Skriven 2005-05-27 19:00:12 av Stephen Hayes (5:7106/20.0)
Ärende: Visiting ancestral homes and living relatives in Britain
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My wife and I have just returned to South Africa from a trip to Britain,
visiting family and friends and places where ancestors had lived. A couple of
months before we left I asked on some of the genealogy forums for advice on how
to make the best use of limited time, and now that we're back home I thought
others who might be planning to do something similar might find an account of
it useful.

I had not visited Britain for nearly 40 years, and my wife had been for a few
days when she won a ticket to the cup final in 1996 (when Man U beat
Liverpool). We'd never really visited places where our ancestors had lived,
though she had toured around more than I had.

We got quite a lot of different advice, and one of the most valuable was not to
spend too much time in record repositories, but rather absorb the atmosphere.
So we planned a fairly tight schedule -- hired a car in London when we arrived
early on a Mon- day morning, visited friends near Winchester, and then spent a
couple of nights at a B&B near Bath (Pickfords at Beckington, recommended!).

The next day we picked up a second cousin in Bristol, and visited some 5th
cousins at Kelston near Bath. I'd not met any of them before, though we had
corresponded. We looked at the family trees each of us had drawn, chatted about
the people on them, and looked at family photos. We'd scanned a lot and put
them on a laptop computer, which was the easiest way to carry them and show
them to people. In the afternoon we took cousin Jane to Winscombe and Axbridge,
where Hayes ancestors had lived. My great grandfather's pub in Axbridge, the
Red Lion, was now a private house, but cousin Jane, bold as brass, knocked on
the door and asked if we could have a look around. The new owner, an American
interested in renovating old buildings, very kindly gave us a cup of tea, and
said he was quite used to people coming into the kitchen and asking for food,
not realising that it was no longer a pub.

Next day we headed off to Cornwall, pausing for lunch at North Curry where the
earliest Hayes ancestor claimed to have been born. The crumbling stone church,
with its octagonal tower, under scudding clouds, with strange birds calling,
was far more numinous and spooky than Glastonbury, which we had passed through
to get there, and in spite of its reputation, seemed banal and suburban by
comparison. And being there was important. I'd read about the flat lands in
books, and about the basket willows, but
*seeing* them made a big difference. The pub, the Bird in Hand,
did a pretty good lunch. Some things had changed since 40 years ago -- English
cooking had improved. No more plastic and breadcrumb Walls sausages -- they had
real meat. No more twee "French fried potatoes". Honest-to-goodness chips were
back in fashion. Other sixties kitsch had gone too -- like pubs with shin-high
tables and muzak.

We visited some villages in Devon, scurrying through narrow sunken lanes like
rats in a maze. All we saw of one ancestral village was a sign on a hedge:
"Dunchideock -- please drive carefully". Don Moody, who used to frequent one of
the genealogy forums, had said Doddiscombsleigh pub provided a very good meal,
but we were still full from lunch at North Curry. Wandered around the church
yards at Ashton and Trusham, snapping gravestones with the digital camera, but
the memorials to the Stooke family inside the Trusham church were in better
condition. A briefer stop in Chudleigh (only one ancestor apparently born
there) mainly to look for a loo, and on to Cornwall across Dartmoor and Bodmin
Moor. The moors looked just like the South African highveld.

The next day was a tour of Bodmin Moor parishes. Cardinham, Temple, Blisland,
St Breward, St Teath, St Tudy. Cardinham had very old pews, so there could be
no doubt that generations of ancestral bums had sat on those seats. It was
election day, and when we turned up at Temple there were cars parked all over,
so we assumed at first that everyone had decided no vote at once, but no, it
was a mediaeval wedding in the church, complete with knights in shining armour,
and many colourful costumes.

A highlight was Bodmin. Saw the house my g g grandfather had once lived in, at
3 Higher Bore Street. But before that he had lived at Scarlett's Well, and my
great grandfather had been born there. So we went there, and drank from the
well. There was only one house there, so they must have lived in that, though
some parts were probably recent additions. But it suddenly made sense of his
occupation as "woodman'. So seeing it, and the villages in relation to each
other, made it much more real. Imagination doesn't come close.

The next day we were off to Cardiff, supper with another second cousin,
comparing research notes, telling stories. Then North Wales to one of my wife's
second cousins, farming in Snowdonia near Caernarfon. Spent the following night
with friends in Shropshire, then up to Whitehaven where my wife's grandparents
came from, and to Wastwater, which her grandmother always used to say had "the
highest mountain, the deepest lake, the smallest church, and the biggest liar,
but he's dead." If his gravestone was in the churchyard, we didn't see it. Then
to Girvan, where my great great grandfather was buried, along with the seven of
his eight children who died in infancy. No wonder he committed suicide.

My mother's cousin in Glasgow was the only one we intended to see but missed;
she'd gone off on a bus trip for the day. And so it went, more cousins in
Edinburgh, seeing my alma mater at Durham, staying with a college friend at
Stockton, visiting another cousin in Leeds, visiting churches in the Isle of
Axholme, anoth- er fifth cousin in a little village in Cambridgeshire, ending
up with four days staying in a friend's cottage in Twickenham, from which we
visited the Colindale newspaper library.

London was the only place where we used public transport. Hiring a car was the
only way we could fit in the visits to all the other places. English friends,
when they saw our schedule, thought we were crazy, but it was the only way we
could fit in seeing as many people and places as we did, and it wasn't rushed.
It also meant we did not overstay our welcome. But we had ancestors from all
over the British Isles, and mostly round the edges -- none in the middle. That
meant we didn't get to see living relatives who lived in places like
Birmingham, but one can't do everything. You can choose your friends, but you
can't choose your family, so it's always a toss up whether you'll get on with
relatives you've never met before, but we thoroughly enjoyed meeting all of
them, and we hope they were as pleased to see us.

At the Colindale newspaper library we managed to establish a num- ber of exact
dates of death (cheaper than certificates) from newspaper announcements. And in
some of the early 20th century ones there were more detailed accounts of
funerals and mourners and all.

Apart from the newspaper library, the only actual research data we collected
was digital photos of tombstones, with tran- scriptions made in situ of ones
that might be hard to read in the photos.

So at the end we can say of our trip that everything went well, nothing went
wrong (at least not seriously). There were some things and people we'd like to
have seen but didn't, but there's a limit to what one can accomplish with 3
weeks leave. We squeezed in as much as we could without feeling rushed.

So to any others from outside Britain who have British ancestors we would say,
try to visit the places where your ancestors lived, and make contact with
living relatives, even if you've never met them before. You may not hit it off
with all of them, but you're bound to meet some that you like.

Highlights? Hard to say, but probably Scarlett's Well near Bod- min. That house
was probably where my great grandfather was born in 1851. This is where he grew
up (10 in the 1861 census). He played in these fields, these woods, this
stream, drank from this well. These were the things he saw, the sounds he
heard, the smells he smelt.

Some general observations -- changes noticed in Britain in 40 years: I've
already mentioned the improved food. The privatisation of London Transport was
a retrograde step. In 1966, when I used to drive the 133 bus over London bridge
at 9:00 am it was a sea of black brollies and bowler hats hurrying to the City,
and at 5:30 pm the tide reversed. This time I saw only one bowler hat -- on a
college servant at Oxford.

Britain is expensive. Petrol costs twice as much as it does in South Africa
(and we still complain), beer and food in pubs as well. Public transport too.
Bed and breakfast places cost about the same, though, but we noticed that the
more you pay, the less you get. And all but one provided no place to write, not
even a postcard!

Estuary accents are everywhere, even in Cornwall. Didn't hear a West country
accent until we visited my 5th cousin in a little village in the Cambridgeshire
fens -- he still spoke with a Bristol accent. But along with the spread of
London accents to the provinces, an increase in local loyalty. In the 1960s
Union Jacks were everywhere, often tongue in cheek: on coffee mugs, loo seats,
tea towels, you name it. But this time we saw the Cornish flag on the graves of
soldiers who'd been killed in Iraq. English flags, Scottish flags, and of
course bilingual road signs in Wales. There have been a lot of changes in
Britain since the 1960s, but most of them seem to be for the better. But I
still haven't tasted what I am told is the quintessential British dish: Chicken
Tikka Masala.

So, thanks to everyone who gave us advice, whether we took it or not, and I
hope this encourages people who've never seen the homes of their British
ancestors to make the trip.

--
Steve Hayes
E-mail: hayesmstw@hotmail.com (see web page if it doesn't work) Web:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
     http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7783/

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 * Origin: Khanya BBS, Tshwane, South Africa [012] 333-0004 (5:7106/20)