Category Archives: Research

July 5, 2023 · 8:57 am

Island Life ~Alderney

I received this lovely email from a previous curator of Alderney Museum:

“This is Frances (I was the curator at the Alderney Museum). I just wanted to say that I have often read your blog and wanted to let you know how much i enjoy them, particularly the posts about Alderney which I will always be biased towards!

I read your latest blog about women which I found extremely interesting and I thought you may be interested in a couple of things some volunteers and I found in the Alderney museum archives.

One of these was a register for the island girls and boys school. A good friend of mine and museum volunteer has written up every name mentioned (both students and teachers) in this book from the 1800s so that we have an easy reference for researchers.

Additionally when looking in detail at some of the fort plans created by the government when the forts first went up, many of the forts had schools and teacher’s rooms built inside the walls, presumably for the children of the soldiers stationed there. I have some beautiful high res images of this if they are of any interest!

I hope this little bit of info is interesting and that you are doing well. I am living back in London and working in the museum sector here but, and I am sure you are the same, missing Alderney always!”

It was so heartwarming reading this email ~Alderney will always be in my heart!

A special time with Mum and Dad on Alderney

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April 26, 2023 · 11:21 am

How our Family History was Researched

A comment on my last post from my niece prompted me describe how our family history search was carried out, predominantly by our parents.

Firstly it was started in the days before internet searches.

Research on Alderney

Dad wrote down all he knew of his Grandmother Harriet Jane, alongside lots of questions and we headed on a family holiday to Alderney and then on to Guernsey. Here are a couple of key questions:

Who were Harriet’s parents? (my Great Grandmother)

Where did she live?

What happened to them? Dad knew that they had died but how?

There were three ways we could find out information:

  • Visiting a dear lady on Alderney who was in her 80’s, but worked with families who were researching their family trees. All she asked was a donation for the museum and for us to send her any information we gleaned.
  • Visiting the museum where the potter Peter Arnold (and curator I believe) allowed us to search all the old acetates of any records the island possessed on a machine where you carefully turned the handle and looked into a viewer.
  • Looking around the graveyard for possible relatives.

As I have said in a previous post, records on Alderney are not complete due to the evacuation and occupation in WW2.

Most which are available, of course, can now be accessed on-line.

(Meanwhile I researched life on Alderney in the Victorian Age for my novel)

Research on Guernsey

Here there is a Records Office and the Priaulx Library, both mines of information, not to mention Trinity Church where my Great Grandmother Harriet was married. Our parents went back to work on their searches. Family History is absorbing but time consuming.

After our trip together

Subsequently …

A few days was not enough, although we had an enjoyable time together. After that Mum and Dad made another trip to both islands on their own and I too visited Guernsey on my own for my research, which was now diverging from the truth into fiction. I travelled to Guernsey, in the opposite of the journey made by Harriet and her young family, on the slow ferry from Portsmouth, when you are still passing The Isle of Wight after an hour at sea!

As Mum and Dad went on to do more detailed research, uncovering much of what I have described in the previous few posts, they also went on to access records on the internet too, as soon as it was available.

It was a wonderful topic of discussion when we met and they distributed much of it to all the family, although it was poignant but also a delight to find all the original documentation and notes in their things when they had passed away.

Next post …

The Family in Wooston

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March 15, 2023 · 8:37 am

Elizabeth Renier ~ Born 1811 / Quesnel/ Taylor

Let’s start at Elizabeth, my Great Great Great Grandmother, the first relevant person in my family tree and a key character in RIDUNA.

Elizabeth Renier married Nicolas Quesnel on 15th May 1932 on the island of Alderney.

John Taylor became lodger in the household, which we are led to believe was called The Reading Rooms on Braye Road, a boarding house and public house. On the 1861 census on Alderney below this is clearly shown. We spent a lovely hour with Eileen Mignot, who used to be the keeper of all of Alderney’s paper records before everything went digital.

After Nicolas Quesnel passed away Elizabeth married John Taylor, who I imagine had been very supportive in running the public house and lodging house when Nicolas was ill. All of these characters feature in my novel.

On the next post I will bring Harriet, my protagonist, into the picture and it is there that truth begins to diverge from the fiction.

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