I always thought of my family as boring. A boring middle class family in boring Middle England. Where were all those Celtic ancestors, fighting Slavs, romantic Frenchmen that everybody else seemed to be descended from. As far as I could see every single ancestor came from the same part of Yorkshire.
However rummaging through the old family photos to play with revitalising them with AI, I came across this, a picture of my other grandmother when young. Not the dreadful grandmother I posted about before, the other one. Why is she wearing what appears to be a football shirt?
There was only one thing to do. Ask Google. The answer, and I kid you not, she was centre forward for Middlesbrough in 1922. Google can’t be wrong so that’s one exciting ancestor at any rate.
Unlike my other grandmother, who was always around causing trouble, I only saw her once. When I was six I was taken to the big house to see her in her bedroom. I didn’t know it then, but I realise now, that she was dying and I suppose people thought I should see her before she died. Very sad really, but she had a decent life. They lived in one of those big houses built by rich Victorian industrialists, because basically that’s what the family were when they built it. My great great grandfather had started life as a ‘poorly educated stonemason’ at least according to his Wikipedia page, but had won the contract to supply stone for the railway bridges during the railway boom. He had gone on to be a major railway contractor and ended up as Lord Mayor of Coketown. He had thirteen children by two wives and my great grandfather owned a foundry manufacturing manhole covers. So my grandparents had a good life, living in the big house holidaying on the Riviera. But when my grandfather died there was no fortune. What little was left went to his eldest son. My maiden aunt who had kept house for my grandparents was left actually destitute living in a poky bedsit on benefits after being brought up in luxury.
Such is life. Rags to riches and back to boring middle class England in four generations.
