ROB & VAL HAYWOOD
of Leicester & Hull

My wife, Valerie's maiden name was STEVENS, originally from Aylestone, but whose father was from Hinckley in Leicestershire. Other earlier STEVENS came from Enderby, Croft and a few from Oxfordshire.

Valerie's mother was a SWANWICK, from Blaby, south of Leicester. We have got as far back as 1797, but we're fairly sure now that they weren't from Blaby. The name alone possibly suggests a much more ancient medieval link to Nottinghamshire.

Valerie's mother's mother was a FRETTER from Aylestone near Leicester, but originally the family came from Spratton and Welford in Northamptonshire. We now have lots of info on the FRETTERS.

Both Valerie and I grew up in Leicester. Val attended Sir Jonathon North School on Knighton Lane East until 1967, and I was at Crown Hills Secondary School at the top of Gwendolen Road up to 1965. I had a brief period at Ashby Ivanhoe in the summer of 1965 after my parents separated. We met in 1968 whilst both were working at Simpkins & James in Horsefair Street. If anyone can email some fair pictures of that esteemed shop for our own archives, they will be truly blessed. The best we ever seem to find are distant ones of the back door, right across the Market Place
My HAYWOOD family are all originally from the Griffydam, Pegs Green and Coleorton areas of NW Leicestershire, roughly in the Coalville-Ashby-Whitwick triangle. Any more information prior to 1852 would be very helpful.

My mother was a HOLT of Coalville and her father, Harry, was born in nearby Donington-le-Heath. His father was from Thurlaston, born about 1867.

My mother's mother was a MANDERFIELD from the Shepshed area and this name links back into the CORBETT family history. Any further help there too would be much appreciated.

My father's mother was a SMITH of Aylestone, and because some of Val's FRETTER family are also of the Aylestone and Blaby areas, we wouldn't be surprised if we are also distantly related down our parent's mother's lines.

My great grandfather, James HAYWOOD, was born in Griffydam, and he married Edith ISON of Leicester. She was descended from a branch of the HASTINGS family who were of Humberstone and thence Lutterworth, Welford and then Newark. Their line is well-known and we can trace back to the Middle Ages and Lord William Hastings of Towton Moor fame; there are also links in several places into the line of medieval kings, the Plantagenets.

I reckon that if you are English, on both sides, and can trace that back to the 1800s, then something like a quarter of England's native population also have links somewhere to one or more of the landed gentry families, so giving them also links back to the Plantagenet kings. The proportion is even more likely for those from the south of England and into the midlands, but less likely from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and Northumbria - but not impossible. There will be a few folks from County Durham who also have Plantagenet ancestry, but not many. Likewise, not every English family from Sussex will be certain to have it, but it is more common there, and all around the Home Counties. When you get back to the 1400s and realise that at that level, we all have several million great grandparents each, it stands to reason that in a country that then only had a population of four or five million people at best, many were related to each other.

Genetic links back to Plantagenets, and so by default, to the Normans, is far more common than most folks think. Just start digging and you'll find them.
Any help on any of the above lines would be very much appreciated, and perhaps we could perform a likewise service for someone else - isn't that what the Internet was made for, after all?

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