FIND YOUR RURAL ANCESTORS

Strolling along an old drovers’ road or passing through a remote village with its hotchpotch of cottages, it can sometimes feel as though we’re reaching back through time. That connection with the past is even stronger when you know more about the people whose names peer out from behind the ivy on the lichen-covered gravestones of a country church.

In earlier times, trying to uncover our family connections to the countryside would have involved trips to archives, but now, with more and more information going online, it has become much easier for anyone with internet access to explore their family’s rural past.

Before the mid-1800s, most of our ancestors would have lived in villages and market towns. However, the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th century started to pull people away from the countryside and push them towards growing urban areas. Increased mechanisation made it harder for cottage industries such as lace-making and weaving to compete with the factories that had started to spring up