Our trip to England - Sept., 2016

Thanks to your forum and comments from participants we arranged a great trip through England searching anchestorial roots for Woolley.  We were in Ireland and took a ferry from Dublin to Hollyhead.  We rented a car and traveled to:

Woolley in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. We continued on to Derbyshire, Matlock and spent two nights at a B&B.  We visited the Derbyshire record office in Matlock.  The staff was very helpful but with no results for us.  

Next we traveled to Maidstone to visit the Kent History and Library Center. Again the staff was very helpful with the result of finding the marriage certificate of John and Martha from 1766!!  We visited Leeds Castle and had a delightful visit with a local couple living near the Castle.  

We then went onto Canterbury only to find the tomb of the famous St. Thomas Moore had been moved.  We then learned that discussion between the two churches was occurring to move the remains back to another location within the Cathedral.  We then drove to Ashford to return our car.  (When we got back to the States we found a bill from a tole charge that we shuld have paid. We saw no tole booth because much of the signage on the roads had been removed due to new construction.)  I was amazed to find that our drop off was an international travel site until I learned the high speed trains went to Europe.  We took the train to London Victoria Station and spent three days in London touring around the city.  I emailed a good friend in Englnd and said where are all the Brits?  She emailed back and said that is why we only go to London to fly out of the country!!  We then left from Heathrow to return to the States.  We really enjoyed traveling around England and loved the country side.  We would return but would not return to London.  Probably for the same reason we do not go to New York which is full of immigrants whose loyalty to our country is suspect unlike the immigrants of past generations who learned the langange and within a generation fit into the  American Way.  

If anyone would like to contact me you may do so through the Forum - Rosemary Woolley 

Hi Rosemary, and many thanks for your interesting post.

London is well known as a melting pot for different cultures from all around the globe, so as you found out it is a very multicultural place, as well as all the tourists from all over too of course. For some that is part of its charm, however for someone coming over for the first time I guess this could be a bit bewildering as they expect England's capital to be full of brits going about their day. This is just not the case.

It's great that you enjoyed your trip however and that you loved the english countryside. Do you have a favourite place that you went to? Yorkshire? Derbyshire? Kent? a favourite town perhaps. Would be interesting to know. Thanks again for your post.