An Irishman, a Scotsman and a Geordie...

No it’s not the opening line to a bad joke, this is the story of our ancestry and how we came to live in the UK.  The ancestral visa is one of the most well-known visa options available to the citizens of the Commonwealth, and many of us find (or already know) that we had a grandparent (or more!) born in the UK.  But growing up in the dry heat of the Witwatersrand, Ireland and England were just a blob on a map and it never entered my head to learn where my grandmother originally came from. 

Granny as we will always remember her

Even as we started to consider a move to the UK, I still didn’t think too hard about actually seeing where my Gran was born but as I started to research her birth and that of her parents, we unravelled a startling and really quite colourful story.  That is for a blog on a different day but our journey to the UK started with my belief that my Gran was actually Irish, or of Irish descent and our first efforts at research went into finding that link.  But there was none and we hit a wall on the Irish link, although my mother remember her Gran speaking with an Irish accent. 

Granny as a young girl

We knew Granny had lived in England and her father was an Englishman, and even though she had left at a very young age she was, right until her death, proudly English and fiercely patriotic.  That tiny little old lady is the reason that I know how to make proper tea and because of that skill I made fast friends when we first arrived in the UK.  Every Brit appreciates a properly made cup of tea and thanks to my Gran, I can deliver.

I won’t bore you with the details of the confusion over Irish vs English links but suffice to say that with a bit of digging and some help from my mother’s cousin, we manage to uncover Granny’s birth certificate and with that we confirmed she was English born.  So we turned our sights to the UK.

But I was intrigued by our family’s story and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know so when my mother and father announced their move to the UK, I suggested that we go to the town where Granny was born for a visit.  My mother loved this idea but with moving over, and the stress of settling into the UK, this plan was 3 years in the making before we actually made the trek North to find the coastal village where our journey to the UK started in 1915, with the birth of a little girl called Mary.

George and Nora, proud parents of Mary

I wasn’t idle in those years however, and fueled by my own family history, we started looking into my husband’s too.  He is one generation too late for an ancestral link but his Great-grandfather was Scotsman and so we spent some time in the hot, hot summer of 2018 in Scotland and eventually we found the exact street where his Great-grandfather was born.  What fascinated me was that the street still existed, although it is an abandoned lot today.  We went to the Mitchell library to research the street, learn about the area and the poverty of the time that drove people to move to the colonies.  We also got to learn why the street has been an abandoned lot for decades after it had been flattened because of an explosion in a rum factory on the site. 

There’s something strange that happens when you start to connect with your ancestors.  Their stories come alive, they come alive again, you start to really understand these people and their drive to migrate.  As a migrant yourself, you can almost feel the family wanderlust running through your veins.  They moved for a better life, or more adventure, or work opportunities and this is something you really understand. 

Having firmly confirmed that there was no Irishman to speak of, and having visited the very street the Scotsman called home…I now looked into my Gran’s town of birth and discovered that she was a Geordie.  Granny never spoke with a Geordie accent but she moved to South Africa as a small girl and her Father was from Kent so that is easily explained. 

Our journey North started with my sister flying in from Australia for a family holiday and so 9 of us hit the road to find….what we wanted to find we weren’t sure but we definitely were looking really heard for it.  Before we arrived in Newcastle, we knew a few basics – we were looking for a street in Cullercoats that no longer existed, or a Catholic church where Granny was baptized although we had no name, or some sign (any sign) that would connect us to my Gran.  The first sign we got was the very first person we spoke to at the Newcastle Central Metro station, when we asked for directions and after just those few words my mother turned to me and said, “that’s the exact accent my Grandmother had!”.  And so now we knew, that the accent we’d though was Irish was in fact Geordie all along.

After a complete misunderstanding of the Newcastle metro system, resulting in a two hour journey, we arrived in Cullercoats very late in the afternoon, tired, hungry and downright frazzled.

What happened there is really quite magical.  We found our way to the promenade and were looking for any kind of food but most places were closing or just about to.  My dad found the Crescent Club and went in to ask if they could feed a large group like ours so late in the day to which they said “yes of course, come on in” and chef started firing up the grill again. But my mother was beyond her limit by this point and stubbornly refused to move another step, insisting on coffee and scones at the sea-facing tea shop.  While we were still sorting out who would go to the coffee shop and who would head towards real food at the pub, she suddenly changed her mind and decided to join us.  We secretly think that Mary gave her the final nudge she needed because what we were looking for was in that pub.  

Inside we asked the waitress if there was a catholic church nearby and while I was explaining why we were looking for the church, a local man came over to offer information on the area.  Turns out his family have lived in the town for 3 centuries and I got the distinct feeling that not only did he view us as blood, but it was a matter of personal pride to share his knowledge of the town and the history.

We spent well over an hour with him but within the first 3 minutes, he asked which street my Gran had been born in and when we replied, pointed out the window and said “that’s it right there, this is all that remains.”  It’s hard to explain what that actually meant, we had stumbled onto the street where our story started without even knowing – most of it’s gone, having been developed but still, this little corner, this little pub with the last remaining street sign on the wall is what linked us to that day in 1915 and Mary who was the matriarch of our family.  The locals could not have been more welcoming, more friendly, more generous with their information.  We saw photos, we heard stories about the time and the area.  We even got a collective cheers as we left, after providing an afternoon’s entertainment for the watchful (and nosy) townfolk. 

And so we came away with some answers and a wholly satisfying and quite emotional feeling of being connected to one another and to my Gran and family that are now scattered around the world.

If you have arrived in the UK on an ancestral visa, please take the time to make this connection, you owe it to your grandparent to honour them with a small visit and a raising of the glass to your past, present and future.