The Farndale Family
Website
The Story of the Farndale family
Farmers,
pioneers
and soldiers
One Family's Journey through Two
Thousand Years of British History
|
Return to the Home Page
of the Farndale Family Website |
The story of one family s
journey through two thousand years of British History |
The 84 family lines into
which the family is divided. Meet the historical
family and how the wider family is related |
Members of the historical
family ordered by date of birth |
Links to other pages with
historical research and related material |
The story of the Bakers
of Highfields, the Chapmans, and other related
families |
The Time
Traveller s Journey through North Yorkshire
The
History of the North York Moors, Ryedale, York,
Cleveland and beyond |
Welcome to the
website of the history of the Farndale family
Martin
Farndale
The Farndales of Tidkinhow
1910
Joseph
Farndale 1842 to
1901, Chief Constable of Birmingham
The Coat of Arms of General
Sir
Martin Farndale KCB
The Pioneer of the Farndale Genealogy
John,
James,
Alfred,
William,
George,
Martin
(inset) Dictum meum
pactum ( His word is his bond )
This
website tells the story of one family who travelled the path
of their nation's history over two thousand years. We will
meet individual members of the family from the mid thirteenth
century and trace backwards through the history of the place
from where they came, to the Roman and
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian ages. We will meet poachers in
Pickering Forest, inspirers of the Robin Hood legends,
medieval soldiers, merchants of fourteenth century York and
the vicar of fourteenth century Doncaster. We will meet
mariners in Whitby, travel to the Spanish Main, and encounter
the smugglers of Old Saltburn. We will travel into industrial
Cleveland and through the heart of the dark satanic mills of
the nineteenth century. You will be introduced to two
influential Victorian Chief Constables, one of whom unearthed
a dynamite conspiracy. We will follow our family emigrations
to Australia, Ontario, Newfoundland, Alberta, USA and New
Zealand. We will meet soldiers including many who served in
the First and Second World Wars.
The
website will guide you through a family story but will also
provide first hand individual histories of folk who travelled
through the national story. It will tell the histories of many
places, particularly in North Yorkshire.
|
The story of one family's
journey through two thousand years of British History. The
place to start |
|
The
84 family lines into which the family is divided. Meet
the historical family and how the wider family is
related. The place to find the family trees |
|
Members of the historical
family ordered by date of birth. The place to find
an individual |
|
There is now a branch of
this website which explores the history of the Baker
families of Highfields, Fenton and Hasfield, and the
Dods of Cheshire, connected through the marriage of
Peggy Baker and Alfred Farndale. The place to
explore the Baker family history |
Three
Purposes
of this Website
A
Family Story. For Farndales and Descendants of
Farndales. The first purpose of this web site is to make
available genealogical and historical information about the
Farndale Family to descendants of the family, whether or not
they still adopt the surname.
A
Historical Journey. For Historians, Local Historians,
and those with an interest in Yorkshire and its History.
This is also the story of one large extended family and its
footsteps through the history of Britain, focused on its
Yorkshire origins, over two millennia. It invites you to
follow in the footsteps of a related group of individual lives
which tells the story of Yorkshire and of Britain through
time.
A
Genealogical Journey. For Genealogists. This is
also a genealogical journey which
pushes
the boundaries of genealogical research, to provide the whole
story of a single family, reaching into medieval records. It
provides breadth and depth, exploring how genealogy can tell
the detailed story of a family, brought alive by stories
through time.
Three
Ways to access the information
The
Farndale Story. The
Farndale Story is a hub which will provide orientation
and guide you through the story of the family. This is the
best way to absorb the story.
The
Family Branches. The detailed research is provided through
individual pages providing the detailed chronology of the
Farndale family divided into 84
family lines, each of which has its own Family Tree.
This will help you to understand the extent of the whole
family.
The
Farndale Directory. The genealogical material was
originally structured by Martin Farndale using the Farndale Directory,
a list of each individual in chronological order by date of
birth. This is still available and is an easier way to find
individual members of the historic family if you know when
they were born.
Related
Families
and Records
The
Baker Story. The website also tells the story of the
Baker Families of Highfields, and of Fenton Culvert and Hasfield Court.
This includes material about the
Hall Family of Staffordshire, the Bellyse
of Staffordshire and the Dods
of Highfields.
The
Taylor and Andrew families. You will find a genealogy of the Taylor and
Andrew families, for a taste of our smuggler ancestry.
The
Lindsay Family. You will find a genealogy of the
Lindsay family of Alnwick.
The
Chapman Family. There is also a simpler genealogical
exploration of the Chapman
Family of Walter Chapman.
The
Coutts Family. You will find a genealogy of a
maternal line and paternal
line of the Coutts family.
The
Gordon Family. You will find a genealogy of the Gordons
of Birkenburn.
The
Scott Family. You will find a genealogy of a branch of the Scott
family.
The
Burnett family. You will find a genealogy of the
Burnett family.
Regimental
Records. The material collected by Martin Farndale
also provides a unique history of First
Regiment
Royal Horse Artillery 1950 to 1971 and the early years
of the Royal
Military
Academy Sandhurst.
The
History of the Website
This
website is the culmination of work started by Martin
Farndale in 1956 and
continued by his son Richard since 2000.
General
Sir
Martin Farndale KCB died in
May 2000. During his lifetime, he carried out extensive
research into the Farndale family history. This website has
been compiled by his son, Richard Farndale and continues
this research which is made available to anyone who may be
interested. The site was first published on 6 November 2001,
and after a few years off line, was re-published from March
2019.
After
nearly
75 years of work over two generations, the genealogy is
aspiring to be a uniquely thorough genealogy of a
non-aristocratic British family, tracing the family origins
back to the Norman Conquest and beyond and comprising a
historical record of a single wider family. Work continues but
the site already provides significant depth and detail. What
makes this record unique is the thorough research by Martin
and collation of a wide breadth of direct family records and
recollections, which can now be enhanced by twenty first
century search methods. The Farndales descend from the folk
who made up the engine room of British history. For the bulk
of such families, it is generally very difficult to go back
in time much beyond the sixteenth century. However the
Farndales are privileged to have a locative name, which is
rooted to a place. What is more that place is a relatively
small, rural valley in North Yorkshire, which provides a
uniqueness which helps research of early medieval records.
The name therefore provides a unique beacon which makes
navigating the medieval sources a possibility. This has made
it possible to find significant records of individuals back
to the thirteenth century. The history of the place where we
know our ancestors made their home, enables us to take their
story further back in time to Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and
Roman times. We are extraordinarily privileged to be able to
see back that far.
Martin
Farndale
s historical research began: 1956
Site
First Published by Richard Farndale (at
www.farndale.info): 6 November 2001
Site
Second Published by Richard Farndale (at
www.farndalefamily.co.uk): 6 December 2014
Site
Third Published by Richard Farndale (at
www.farndalefamily.co.uk): 16 March 2019
Site
Last Updated: 28 September 2026
Website
Philosophy
Our
forebears tend to be fondly remembered for a generation or two
and then disappear from memory, except for slabs of stone that
mark the place of their burial. However each of our ancestors,
and their close relatives were individuals with their own rich
stories. It is through their stories, and the history of their
lives, that their memories can be preserved within families
and communities of which they were once a part. Their stories
also provide us today with a direct route into our own past
and our inheritance. Each individual in the Farndale lines has
their own separate webpage. Stories are not told about living
members of the families, who simply have a page as a marker to
find their way into their historic story. The stories of
historic ancestors are fully narrated, to preserve the rich
lives each of them led. The website is carefully researched
from primary and
secondary sources with full referencing, to vouch the
narrative and provide a means for further research.
Contact
Me
You
can contact me at rcfarndale@hotmail.com.
Please
pass on details of the site to Farndale relatives, those
interested in Yorkshire history, historians and genealogists.
It is free to use and intended as a source of material for all
those who can benefit from it.
The
best way to view this site
I
suggest that you read the Farndale Story on a PC or tablet. If
you can read the story on a larger screen, that will be the
best approach. An iPhone will work, but the text may not
always align properly.
The
more detailed research pages are primarily intended for use on
a PC. This is because the site is intended for the provision
of detailed information, more suited to the larger format of a
PC. However, it does work quite well on a tablet, such as an
iPad. On an iPhone it may sometimes tend to be distorted with
text not always aligning, though otherwise it still works ok.
Personal
Information
I do
not wish to record detailed information about living Farndales
unless I know that you are happy for me to do so. This site is
about historic Farndales who are no longer alive. As a rule, I
only record the most basic publicly available information
about living Farndales, primarily their year of birth. This is
so that anyone who wishes, can find themselves in the
directory or in family trees, and then use this site to
explore their ancestry.
Where
I am aware of public information about living Farndales, on
their own websites, or public entries on the web which is
available already, I have sometimes included that information
on personal pages of living Farndales.
If
you find your own entry on this website and would like me to
include more information about your part of the family, please
let me know. Please don t provide me with any information you
would not wish to be publicly available.
I think it is very unlikely that I have recorded any
information on the site which people would prefer to keep
private, but if there is any information on this site which
you would prefer not to appear, please email me at rcfarndale@hotmail.com, and I will remove it.
About
the Author
Richard
Farndale
BA (Hons), LLB (Dist), LLM (Dist), FRGS is a former artillery
officer and lawyer. He was Chairman of the Chartered Institute
of Arbitrators in Scotland and practiced dispute resolution in
the Scottish courts and arbitral tribunals. He is a member of
the Royal Historical Society, the Yorkshire Archaeological and
Historical Society, the Cleveland & Teeside
Local History Society and the Helmsley Archaeological and
Historical Society. In retirement he is a passionate amateur
historian and genealogist who applies his professional
understanding of the legal rules of evidence to the
exploration of his own family story, and Yorkshire's history,
with an interest in the Baker family of Cheshire as well.
Richard's father, the late General Sir Martin Farndale KCB,
started to research the history of the Farndale family in the
1950s and Richard has continued that research since Martin
died in 2000. The work is a two-generation endeavour.
Published
articles
by the Author
Farndale,
Ricard,
(2024), Farndale and its Medieval Beginnings in Medieval
Yorkshire, the journal of the Medieval Section of the
Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society, Issue 11,
2024. See pages
25
to 47 and pages
48
to 69.
Farndale,
Richard,
(2026), England's 1100th: Deira and the Idea of
Anglo-Saxon Unification in Yorkshire Archaeological
Journal, 1"6. https://doi.org/10.1080/00844276.2026.2692264.
Richard
is currently working on a two-part series on the history of
Kilton, North Yorkshire, home to the Farndales for 250 years,
for Cleveland History.
Peering back
into our deep history
The village in fact was like a
deep-running cave still linked to its antic past, a cave
whose shadows were cluttered by spirits and by laws still
vaguely ancestral. This cave that we inhabited looked
backwards through chambers that led to our ghostly
beginnings; and had not, as yet, been tidied up, or scrubbed
clean by electric light, or suburbanised by a Victorian
church, or papered by cinema screens.
It was something we just had time
to inherit, to inherit and dimly know " the blood and
beliefs of generations who had been in this valley since the
Stone Age.
That continuous contact has at
last been broken, the deeper caves sealed off for ever. But
arriving, as I did, at the end of that age, I caught whiffs
of something old as the glaciers. There were ghosts in the
stones, in the trees, and the walls, and each field and hill
had several.
The elder people knew about these
things and would refer to them in personal terms, and there
were certain landmarks about the valley " tree-clumps,
corners in woods " that bore separate, antique,
half-muttered names that were certainly older than
Christian. When I sat at home among my talking sisters, or
with an old woman sucking her jaws, and heard the long
details, I would look through the windows and see the wet
walls streaming, the black trees bend in the wind, and I saw
these things happening as natural convulsions of our
landscape, and though dry-mouthed, I was never astonished.
(Lee, Laurie (1959), Cider
with Rosie, Chapter 6, pages
104
to 105).
The past is a foreign country,
they do things different there.
(Hartley, L P (1954), The
Go-Between, Prologue, page
1).