Can’t believe I did this….

So we had booked a nice break for a few days in our motorhome. We had arranged to visit Chatsworth House in Derbyshire for their Christmas ‘Alice in Wonderland’ themed display.

Chatsworth was lovely and put us in festive mood.

For accommodation we chose to stay on a nice little farm site in a small village called Old Brampton near Chesterfield.

The next day the sun was out and we decided on a circular 5 mile loop walk, visiting the picturesque village church of St.Peter’s.

This was ‘en route’ to the adjacent Linacre Valley and our perambulations through the peaceful wooded surrounds of the 3 Linacre reservoirs. Just beautiful and rounded off our stay nicely.

Next day we returned home and you might be wondering if this was going to be a post about family history…and you’d be right!

During the weekend that followed, I sorted the photos from our trip and did a bit of re-filing on my large collection of family related documents and photos.

I picked up a few document snippets from my dear late Aunt Cynthia, and was marvelling with Les at the neatness and work that had gone into her family history records and I’m sure you will agree from the clips below. (Oooh….’Middleton’ – wonder if we’re connected!)

Have you spotted it already? When we looked a bit harder we were gob smacked! Not only was Chesterfield plastered across them, but Old Brampton jumped out of the page.

We had literally been walking in my ancestors footsteps, not a care in the world, and hadn’t realised it! We had walked in the grounds of St.Peters, Old Brampton where my 2 x great grandmother had been baptised in 1826, completely un-aware.

Well I studied the documents and photos from our walk with renewed interest. It was like Cynthia had led us to her documents and rapped me across the knuckles for not paying attention. A return visit must be made!

Below is a small typewritten extract of Cynthia’s report about this part of the tree. I was greatly interested to read again about the origin of Obadiah Roebuck’s name and yes….the methodist connections which play nicely on the recent and continuing series of posts about methodism and our ancestor, the Reverend Thomas Holliday.

Of course all this is on the modern web version of our family tree, but due homage must be paid to the work of our great, late family historian.

Cynthia Clare – Genealogist (1922 – 1999)