Roger Hall

I’m Roger Hall, living at present in Thetford, Norfolk. I became interested in family history shortly after my marriage to Julia in 1968. Her mother was one of 14, and she had a family bible in which were recorded the births, marriages and deaths of every member of the family from the 1850s onwards. This fascinated me, and I drew up an enormous family tree from it, sellotaping together several sheets of paper (quarto size in those days). I wanted to know more, and to take the family further back, and trips to Somerset House in London, where the national registers of births, marriages and deaths were housed, followed - there was no internet so no online records in those days. The registers were huge bound volumes which had to be heaved down from their shelf onto a reading slope and then heaved back up again. There was one for each quarter of each year so a lengthy search was good exercise! Then there were the census returns - dusty tied up bundles of papers in cardboard boxes in a London basement, still then unfilmed and unindexed. It took a lot of trips and a lot of fruitless searching, but eventually I had traced almost all of Julia's 16 great-great grandparents and almost all of mine.

As the years went by (family commitments permitting - 4 children take up quite a lot of time!) I expanded my research, making use of an ever-increasing range of sources. By 1993 I had completed all the easy parts of our family trees, so I decided to expand my field of research by undertaking a one-name study of a particular ancestral surname, collecting and trying to link all references to that surname both in the UK and abroad. But which surname to choose? Hall is far too common – I would soon be overwhelmed with data. I thought I’d take a random year of the UK England & Wales birth index and see which of our ancestral surnames was the rarest, so I did this and came up with Drakeford, my maternal grandmother’s maiden name.

And the rest is (family) history …

Tim Drakeford

I think I was one of the first people that Jeremy contacted in 1975, certainly one of the first to respond. He rang me up and we chatted about what he was trying to do and the information I had given him.

I had explained how my branch of the family came originally from Staffordshire but in recent generations had settled in Yorkshire. My great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather were potters and the search for work had brought them to the Don valley which at that time, the second half of 19^th century, was industrialising at an incredible pace. Five generations later it was the same driver, the opportunity for work, which brought me from Yorkshire via Bristol to Birmingham in the West Midlands.

At the end of the call Jeremy said he would send me a copy of the work when he had finished it. Time passed. I’d almost forgotten about the conversation when in 2005 the daughter who was very new in 1975 told me she had been trawling the internet, found a reference to the Drakeford name, which had led to a conversation with someone called Jeremy Drakeford!

So, thirty years after Jeremy’s first call I received a second one, in the course of which Jeremy invited me to a meeting in Congleton. Thus I became involved with the group and the rest as they say has been genealogy. It has been and continues to be very time consuming, at times highly frustrating, but always great fun. I am, however, still waiting for Jeremy’s finished product!

David Drakeford

David Drakeford was born in Dublin in 1957, the second son of Bill (Alfred Vernon) and Audrey Drakeford. He went to Wesley College and then studied Physics in Trinity College Dublin, going on to do a Masters in Engineering. Initially, he worked in Telecommunications and then Management Consultancy with Coopers & Lybrand, working in Italy in 1996. He then worked for the European Medicines Agency, which is an EU institution involved in Pharmaceutical Regulation from 1997 to 2013. He returned to Ireland and worked with the Irish Cancer Society from 2013 to 2015. In 2016, he took early retirement with the aim of setting up his own business. He has three sons: Max, Oliver and William (Bill).

He now lives in Co Wicklow, near the Killmacurragh Botanic Gardens. Incidentally, the first in his line of Drakeford’s was also born in Wicklow. Eileen Drakeford was born in 1895 to his Great Grandfather Alfred Joseph Drakeford. Alfred, from Liverpool, met his wife from Yorkshire in and around 1889 and they moved to Dublin. They had four children. The eldest was Eileen, but the youngest was David’s grandfather, Albert - born in 1901. He was the only Drakeford to remain in Ireland after Irish Independence in 1921 and went on to marry Norah Morris in 1926. David’s father was born in 1928 and he married David’s mother, Audrey Stephens, in 1952.

David’s Grandfather Albert was the cousin of Jeremy Drakeford’s Grandfather David Harold Drakeford, as such Jeremy and David are third cousins and come from the family of clockmakers in Congleton in Cheshire. The Congleton Drakeford’s were associated with the Parnell family, also from Congleton in the 17th Century. David lives close to Charles Stewart Parnell’s family home in Avondale, Co. Wicklow. The family that was instrumental
in the groundwork for Irish Independence. What goes around comes around!

David interests include Chess, Photography, Football, Motorcycles, Film, and Genealogy.

Chris Drakeford

I’m Christopher John Drakeford, the elder twin of Michael (shown below). Born in Wolverhampton, we moved with our family in 1959 to Chailey in East Sussex where I attend the local school. My main interest at school was sport and I captained various teams. I continued to play football and squash well into my 40s. After completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter joiner I returned to college and qualified as an estimator and building surveyor. I retired in 2007. Since then my interests have been travelling, especially to India, gardening and DIY which I very much enjoy.  

I have been married to Sue for over 50 years and we have 2 sons, Richard and Ashley and 6 grandchildren. 

I was surprised when, with Michael and our cousin Lynn, we managed to photograph over 300 Drakeford documents and seals at the Stafford Records Office. This was a small portion of Drakeford material there, but we thought the most interesting. To have those records available was down to the Friendship between Richard Drakeford, the Mariner, and Lewis Dickenson, who was part of a legal family that retained records of the firm over many years.

Simon Drakeford

My name is Simon Drakeford, hailing from the Coventry Drakefords, or more precisely the Foleshill Drakefords, who trace their line back to at least 7 generations from that area of Coventry.

I was acquainted with the Drakeford study group by a remarkable coincidence. While living in Shanghai, I was researching the history of the Shanghai Rugby Club. I became aware that a Drakeford had played rugby in Shanghai in the early 1900s, got married and had three children. The family remained there until 1940. Furthermore, another family of non-rugby playing Drakefords, also lived in Shanghai and China from the late nineteenth century until the 1950s.

Quite separately, my wife’s Aunt living in Bideford in Devon met Jeremy Drakeford at their local church. The introductions were made, and a key to who the China Drakefords were was placed in my hand.

The rugby playing Drakeford was Jeremy’s uncle, hailing from the Liverpool group of Drakefords. The non-rugby playing Drakefords were the relations of Roger Hall, another study group member and another Coventry Drakeford, but from the Nuneaton / Attleborough clan. His ancestors left Coventry for Australia, some of whom later arrived in China.

Since leaving Shanghai, I have lived in London and was able to attend my first Drakeford convention meeting. I have subsequently moved to Lancashire where we now live. I was delighted to find out that all members so far tested can show via their DNA that somewhere beyond the reach of paperwork we have a common ancestor.

Michael Drakeford

I was born in Wolverhampton in 1946, and educated at Lewes Grammar School, in Sussex from 1959. On leaving school I joined Midland Bank at the Guildford branch in 1965 for an initial five year posting. My career has included working in the south of England and East Anglia, but most of my career was spent both at Branches and Head Office in London. For the latter I was engaged in the city Head Office, a branch in Piccadilly, a secondment to Ernst & Whinney, corporate banking and finally in compliance where I spent the last 15 years of my career, culminating as Head of Compliance HSBC, UK Banking. From 1982, I lived back in Guildford in an estate called Abbotswood with my wife Georgina and our two boys, James and Peter. Here I proactively supported the estate, and the area around. This culminated in my writing a book entitled ‘A History of Abbotswood, Guildford’s most Unusual Estate’. The book features the 25 Arts and Crafts houses on the estate designed by Claude Burlingham, and his many more designs around other parts of Guildford and the South East of England. 

My interests include local and family history, gardening, and travelling with Georgina; either cruising or on long distance tours on our 1933 Lagonda motor car.

Over the years, I had intended to continue work started by my father, Richard Kenneth Drakeford involving the history of the Drakeford family. He left two note books of his work, three extracted Staffordshire parish registers, and a book from the William Salt Library. Since moving to Sussex in 2010, and having spare time after the Abbotswood book, I started to produce a number of papers about the history of the Drakeford family. In 2012 Jeremy sold me a clock and introduced his work and that of the other ‘cousins’ on this list.  Constant encouragement by Jeremy has led to an expansion of this work to where it is today. I consider that my studies are a series of ‘drafts’ on the basis that information continues to arise on each and every topic. Thus, the work will never end, and hopefully future generations will continue to add to this history of the Drakeford family.

Jeremy Drakeford

David Jeremy Drakeford, called by my middle name, was born in Woking in 1941. I did not excel in academic qualifications at Cranleigh School in Surrey, very much preferring the excellent sporting activities available and I suppose in the knowledge that University was not for me in heading straight into the family business in London.

My grandfather, David Harold Drakeford founded a Passenger Shipping Agency at number 60, Haymarket, in the West End of London in 1914, in the days when travelling was made by sea, and my father, David Alan Drakeford followed in his footsteps.  So I  joined my father in the Company in 1962. With the decline in travel by sea in favour of the fast growing airline industry, it led to the family business ‘merging’ with a subsidiary of the P&O Shipping Company in 1963 and I then moved into the Travel Agency side of this company, followed by freight Shipping in Liverpool and all aspects of the new mode of shipping in containers.

I married Sally A.R. Bawtree in 1967; we have 2 sons and a daughter, all married now and each with 2 children.

I retired in 1999 to North Devon where we renovated a dilapidated farm house and converted 2 barns to cottages for family members to live close-by.

My very first training job in 1960 was in Liverpool for a Freight Forwarding firm and the choice of Liverpool was to experience ‘real’ shipping and also that it was where my grandfather, Harold was born in 1878, his grandfather having travelled from Congleton to become a Corn Broker in Liverpool around 1845. So this short stay in Liverpool for me in 1960, as a bachelor, was the start of a strong interest in my family history!