Ancestral Britain

Voyage into your past.

Imagine spending 35 days on a storm-tossed sailing ship, carrying everything you own in an unwieldy trunk, trying to cope with seasickness, cramped conditions and lousy food, while watching some of your fellow passengers fall ill or die from cholera or typhus. It’s a chilling thought but it may have been the challenge faced by one of your ancestors, setting out from Britain to start a new life in a distant land: the place your family has probably called home for several generations.

Until the 1860s it took 35 days to sail from one of the emigration ports such as Plymouth, Southampton or Liverpool to the United States or Canada. For those heading to Australia or New Zealand, 10 to 17 weeks was nearer the mark.

Thanks partly to the aid and impetus the Internet has given amateur researchers, more and more people are coming to Britain in search of their family’s roots. When you consider that over nine million emigrants sailed from Liverpool alone in just one hundred-year period (1830-1930) imagine how many more millions around the world can trace their ancestry to the UK.

Geneology as a leisure pursuit is being put into sharper focus in 2007 as the year marks the 400th anniversary of the first British settlement in North America. The modern USA has its roots in Jamestown, Virginia when, in 1607 – a decade before the Pilgrim Fathers founded Plymouth, Massachusetts – a band of intrepid adventurers from Eastern England landed there. One was John Rolfe, who married the Native American princess, Pocahontas. Those who think they may be related to one of the original Jamestown settlers are being invited to log on to special websites – www.visitbritain.com/ancestry and www.beginyouradventure.co.uk – to find out more.

The fascination with tracing one’s ancestors is expanding well beyond the shores of the USA. A recent survey by VisitBritain showed that as many as 50 per cent of potential Australian and New Zealand visitors to Britain would like to research their ancestry as part of their trip. Scotland welcomes more than 250,000 visitors looking into their family history every year.

Ancestral tourism visitors to Britain are much like any other sort, wanting to take in the popular sights, go shopping and sample a range of restaurants and pubs. For these people, however, their trip seems to have a deeper meaning as they also go in search of the little village where their ancestor grew up, or the country graveyard which is the resting place of family members.

Research carriedout i spare moments at home takes on a startling reality as the places where kith and kin were born, married or died are sought out, visited and photographed. It is not uncommon for emotions to take over, with visitors shedding a tear or two en route, or at least reporting an enjoyable evening spent in a friendly pub as they recount their investigations to the locals!

Tourist organisations are making life easier by presenting material on websites designed to cater for this type of special interest travel. VisitBritain’s www.visitbritain.com/ancestry has teamed up with www.ancestry.co.uk to provide a customised family name search function on its home page; while www.homecomingwales.com has a useful section on the origin of Welsh surnames (it is a common misconception that anyone from Wales is called Jones). The Scottish site, www.ancestralscotland.com includes a listing of events which may have a specific clan link, such as Highland Games, while www.discoverireland.com taps into the Irish Genealogical Project with its 15 million records dating from the 17th century.

People who venture to Britain will also stumble upon some finds that are remarkable in their own right. Those following the Gosnold Trail – in honour of Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, the ‘prime mover’ of the Jamestown expedition of 1606-7 -- in the county of Suffolk, can visit his ancestral home, Otley Hall near Ipswich. This 16th century moated house with its minstrels’ gallery, Great Hall and decorative chimneys is filled with the spirit of the Elizabethan age and visitors are often shown around by the enthusiastic current owners.

Visitors to Kent can explore the Historic Dockyard at Chatham, the heart of Maritime Britain where wooden sailing ships were built and more than 400 years of naval history resides. In the North-West, the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool has a fascinating gallery dedicated to emigration from Britain, where the statistics take on human faces and individual tales are recounted of hardships, endurance and journeys to new lands.

At some point, every family historian is likely to use the services of the National Archives, which holds the records of the UK government from the 11th century to the present. A visit to the Archives’ offices, in Kew, West London, is worthwhile in researching ancestors as it is possible to see and handle a wide range of documents, see regularly-changing exhibitions and relax in a bookshop and café. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Four hundred miles north in Edinburgh, an exciting development is taking place for those researching their Scottish roots. A new Scottish family history centre will create a ‘one-stop-shop' for genealogy research in the centre of the capital by bringing together services currently provided separately by several organisations. Called the Scotland’s People Centre and expected to open in autumn 2007, it will enable visitors to search records, some 500 years old, trace their family tree and get a glimpse into the richness of Scotland’s past. It will include exhibitions, search rooms and retail spaces and be open to everyone. www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk.

But why is there such a growing interest in ancestral tourism? Perhaps it is something to do with an urge to return to our roots; a human homing instinct. In the words of Deirdre

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