A bit of background to where we went to in Suffolk.
When I started researching my family history about twenty years ago, I was sure that my family were from Lancashire and the Greater Manchester area and Middleton in particular. I did not know much about my ancestors beyond my grandparents. The only great grandparent I knew about was my grandmother’s father who I knew as Grandad Fox. I must have met him a few times as he lived in Middleton but he died when I was about nine years old. I knew stories about him such as his wife died just after giving birth to my grandmother and that he remarried someone from Wales after the First World War. I didn’t know my great grandmother’s name or family and only knew his second wife as t’other mammy. She died a couple of years before I was born. So I decided to look into Grandad Fox’s ancestors as a starting point on my family history research. My mum had his death certificate and so I found his name was Charles James Fox and he was born in about 1884.
At the time I started my family history research there was very little in the way of records on-line so it meant sending off for certifcates or going to libraries for information. The only census on-line at that time was the 1901 census and I found him living with his mother and stepfather in Middleton, Greater Manchester. His birthplace, however, was given as Tamworth, Staffordshire (although the transciption incorrectly gave it as Farnworth). According to this census, his mother and elder sister were born in Liverpool, his stepfather and older brother in Tamworth, one of his half brother in Wigan and the other in Middleton. As you csn imagine I was amazed and so sent off for his birth certificate to find out who his parents were. Going backwards with the censuses his father Francis was born in Tamworth but his father, also called Francis, was born in Blaxhall in Suffolk. This led to me looking into the family in Suffolk and I found that my five times Great Grandfather Henry Fox was born in 1756 in Levington, Suffolk and moved with his wife Martha to Chillesford in Suffolk. They had six children, one of which was my 4x Great Grandfather John Fox who moved to Blaxhall after his marriage to Elizabeth Rands. For various reasons they then moved to Sandbach, Cheshire (to avoid going into the Workhouse). I will elaborate more on this when I go into my family history at a later date.
The reason for this background is that we decided to go and visit the area around the coast of Suffolk where they lived and to look at records in Ipswich Records Office. We went a few times over a period of five or six years but then circumstances made it difficult to go back. This summer we finally decided it would be nice to revisit the area and the following blogs on Suffolk give a taste of where we went and what we did. Not all is family history related as we went for the coastal views as well. The posts of the churches and graveyards we visited will be posted on the Churches and Graveyards page.
The map below gives a general idea of the places we visited.
