My Ancestral Quest
History has always fascinated me, well, local history more than anything. I mean, it was sort of interesting to learn in school about the Romans and the Battle of Hastings and all those Roundheads, but when it came to the topics about things like the two World Wars, my curiosity would lie with the social aspects of it – what life was like for those on The Home Front and the effect it had on the local areas. Even outside of the classroom, I was always looking for pictures of what the local high street looked like years ago and wondering what the house I grew up in would have looked like when it was first built. As I’ve grown up, that interest has evolved, and of course the internet has helped massively. In recent years I’ve found old maps of where I lived which was positively mesmerising. Afterwards, I would be out walking with friends and then take great pride in pointing out that a particular street we were passing used to be the location of a football ground in the 1890s. It isn’...