We had a another good day out today. A bit of ancestor worship around the Thames Valley.
We set off from Henley on Thames mid morning and first of all went to visit Greys Court, a National Trust place North of here. We were a little early but they let us in the grounds and gardens. The house itself was not due to open until 1pm so that will have to be another day. The gardens were a treat, they seemed to be all seperated by walls, The rose garden, the White garden, the wisteria garden the kitchen garden etc.; and access to each was through a gate. This made it all very interesting in a suprise sort of way; you never knew what was around the corner. As we could not tour the house we finished off with a climb up the tower that gave wonderful views of the gardens and countryside. While up the tower we spoke to another couple who had a Welsh accent and I asked the guy if he was from Wales. he was and I told him my dad was from Pontardulais. He said he knew Pontarduais well as he was from Llanelli. I told him my grandfather was from the Thames Valley and moved to Wales following the Sheet Metal Industry work. He replied that his second cousin had written books on Wales and one was about the sheet metal works that boomed in that time. The author was Alun John Richards and a google would find him; It did later on when back in Jemima. We bid goodby to them and moved on.
Next stop was Ewelme (you-lim), a place that dad had mentioned to me as where an ancester was from. The church was close while a new heating system was being fitted but it had two churchyards, one each side of the road. We found one Mundy and three Mundays on the gravestones. A great start. We moved on a couple of miles to Benson.
At Benson we found Church Lane and then St Helen’s Church. Again there were two graveyards, one each side of the road. We found more Mundays, it looks like dad had good information. We moved on again to Crowmarsh Gifford.
It was a struggle to find a church at Crow Gif and several passes through the place got us nowhere so we gave up and set out for Whitchurch on Thames and the Greyhound pub. As we left Crow Gif Marg saw a brown sign saying Historic Church so I turned around at the next roundabout and followed the sign down a side road. We ended up back in the middle on Crow Gif so turned around and retraced our route. At the point where we were almost back to the main road Marg go out and asked a UPS van driver where the old church was. He pointed straight down a cart track that we had ignored. Off we drove for about half a mile until we passed a house then a farm then reached a gate with cows looking at us from the field beyond. There hadn’t been any more signs so I turned the car around in a gateway. That was when I saw the gravestones in the rear view mirror through the gateway. We had found it. We only found one Mundy in the graveyard but what a treat. We were in the middle of nowhere on our own and the church was unlocked so we could view it at leisure. It was one of those moments you log in your mind as well worth remembering for the sheer atavistic shared pleasure. We had to leave then for Whitchurch and the Greyhound.
We trundled on to Whitchurch and found the Greyhound was still a pub and it was open. When I gooled it some weeks ago it had a ‘for let’ sign outside. Marg took a picture or two of me stood outside in more or less the position of my great great grandad on the photo then we went in. It was better than I could have imagined, small and cosy with low beams and old pictures on the walls. The barmaid told us that food was finished until the evening so we simply had a drink and a bag of crisps. The lady serving us was about to finish her shift but she was too nice to say so and chatted to us about why we were there. She then pointed to some photos on the wall and when we looked one was the same as ours but framed A4 and underneath it said it was presented by Gaynor Wingham. Dad got the photo from her, I remember dad talking about her when he did his family researches. The graves at Ewelme were overwhelmed with Wingam names. The barmaid then left and the Landlady was behind the bar, as we were not going to buy more drinks I felt guilty she was having to talk and amuse us. No one elst was in the place by then. She said that there was a lovely crowd in most nights and we should come back then and chat to them and perhaps discover some more family stories. It’s not likely is it, When my grandadx2 was landlord was over a 100 years ago.