My family

Rachel Field nee Jones

Margam Steelworks, one of my first memories

My family history is typical of people from Glamorgan: a mixture of migrants drawn to the Valleys to work in the coalmines in the C19th. They came from Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire in west Wales, Glamorgan itself, and also from the English West Country.

Paul Field

Champion skaters race across the fens, just as Paul’s prize-winning ancestors did

Paul’s family moved over the centuries from East Anglia to the East End of London and then back again. How amazing that, by complete co-incidence, our son now lives in Mendlesham where his ancestors lived three hundred years ago.

Alex Hayton

Utrecht, Netherlands where a branch of Alex’s family lived for several hundred years

Our son-in-law’s heritage is truly European. His ancestors are from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and England. His 3 x great grandfather, Antoinie Bicker, served in the Dutch army, probably in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). He was a ‘werkman’ and ‘arbeider’ (labourer) in civvy street.

Sara Field nee Idziniak

Tarnow, home of the Idziniak family, was a town with a significant Jewish population. Sara has always thought that some of her family roots here might be Jewish.

Sara, our daughter in law, is from Stalowa Wola, a steel town in south east Poland. Most of her ancestors are from southern Poland, but one of her grandmothers, Helena Sielazek, was born way up in the north east, in what is now Belarus. Helena and her husband met in a German camp for displaced Poles at the end of WW2. In time, they settled in south Poland.

Ben Field

The Talbot Inn, Stapleford Tawney, Essex, 1863. Ben’s great-great-great grandfather was listed here as an ostler in the 1861 census.

Cutlers in Sheffield, cotton mill workers in Lancashire, and publicans in rural Essex – our nephew, Ben Field, has engineering and beer running through his veins.

Mick Thompson

Southwold Beach (1898) where some of Mick’s fishing ancestors lived and worked

Our brother-in-law, Mick Thompson, is a Suffolk boy through and through.

Julie Brown

Julie is the mother of one of our nieces-in-law. By the turn of the C20th, their ancestors were the backbone of south London: builders in Camberwell and tanners in Bermondsey.