How much do you know about your ancestors?
Get in touch if you’d like me to trace an ancestor and/or bring their story to life. As an amateur genealogist, I have no formal qualifications, just a serious passion for research and social history and a knack for finding things — hopefully my results speak for themselves.
My rate is £20 per hour. It would start with a (free) consultation to discuss your request.
About me
After graduating with a French degree from the University of Hull, and old-school backpacking, I settled in London where I had two children. After relocating to Canterbury, I worked at the University of Kent for over twenty years in a variety of roles, most recently as a Careers Adviser.
After taking voluntary redundancy I decided to follow my passion for writing and completed my first novel inspired by an astonishing DNA match and what it taught me about my maternal grandma’s life. I’m actively querying agents.
In addition to my own family research:
I volunteer as a researcher for the Salonica Campaign Society
I’m on the freelance researcher reserve team for ITV’s Long Lost Family, available for research assignments as required
I’m a Photo Volunteer for Find a Grave
I continue to write. I’m writing a prequel to Take Me Home, and short stories.
I enjoy playing the piano, I’m (slowly) learning Arabic and my garden is, and always will be, my sanctuary. Below is an extract from one of my short stories.
“A quote was pinned to the noticeboard: As long as one has a garden, one has a future; and as long as one has a future one is alive, Frances Hodgson Burnett, “In the Garden” (1925).
Her garden gave her a past too though. Here, a shrub rose grown from a cutting of a plant in her grandfather’s garden. There, a hybrid tea rose named ‘Sheila’s Perfume’ that she selected in memory of her mum. By the back door, a plum tree, a gift from her dad. Her sister’s honeysuckle that clambered over the arch and a half barrel of annuals (‘Edna’s Barrel’) planted up each year in honour of her grandma. The apple tree she planted with her son when his sister left home, and countless other trees and shrubs that friends gave her over the years. Each new bud whispered the names of former pets whose fur had been scattered, and although the graffiti she painted with her daughter along the fence had faded, it still brought colour to the garden in the darkest of winters.
If only someone had told her, all those years ago, that had she looked at her garden in this way, she would not have been lonely. Here, she was immersed in the love of her friends and family and the loving spirits of her ancestors.
Now in her eighties, their presence was greater than ever, not just from the plants and flowers, but from deep underground, where roots and seeds were energising and preparing for their time in the sun”.
