Interesting trip out today, 30 miles down the track from Radstock to Stalbridge, just inside the Dorset border and the paternal family area.I have traced, in one way or another, the family back to about 1650, but today was not specifically on that tack.
For many year most of the village, houses buildings and land (now a town!) was in private ownership, but in 1918, for whatever reason, the owner Lord Stalbridge, of the Grosvenor dynasty, decided to put the whole lot up for auction. Recently the Stalbridge History Society have put together a wonderful book telling of that event. For three days this week they held an exhibition in the Stalbridge Hall showing much detail of the outcome of that sale, with maps and photographs and many stories about "STALBRIDGE SOLD".
Although it is my "ancestral homeland" and I have lots of family history information from there, it is many years since I had visited the town.
One of the people to whom I spoke during the couple of hours I was there turned out to be a distant relative whom I had never met but whose family name I could recall from my own FH search.
I brought home with me a copy of the book prepared by the History Group , and whilst most of my nearest relations had, by 1918, left the village, I can forsee many hours of "dipping pleasure" to see what, if any family secrets of mine it contains.
