The Story of the Farndale Research
Martin Farndale received an Honorary
Doctorate of Letters from the University of Greenwich in 1995
A history of the genealogy
The
passion behind the genealogy
Martin
Farndale (1929 to 2000) began to work on the genealogy of his family in the
1950s. It became his passion even though he worked on the family history
alongside an extraordinary military career which took him from Regimental
Command to command of the British army based in Germany in the 1980s and to
command of the Northern Army Group of NATO, the north half of the defensive
force of Western Europe during the Cold War.
Martin was a
passionate historian and as well as his genealogical work, he wrote definitive
histories of the Royal Artillery, a task which he started early in his military
career and continued until he died. He wrote the History
of the Royal Artillery, France 1914-1918, published in 1987. He wrote the History
of the Royal Artillery, The Forgotten Fronts and the Home Base, 1914-1918,
published in 1988. He wrote the History
of the Royal Artillery in the Second World War (The Years of Defeat 1939-41),
published in 1996. He wrote the History of the
Royal Artillery (The Far East Theatre 1941-1946, which was published
posthumously. He also wrote many articles for the British Army Review and the
Royal Artillery Journal.
He was also
Chairman of the English Heritage Battlefields Trust from
1993, a trust which endeavours to preserve battlefields from being destroyed by
new roads and building. Martin succeeded in saving the site of the Battle of
Tewkesbury (1471) from developers. He took part as a guest lecturer during a
number of battlefield tours covering both the First and Second World Wars.
Following his command of the Regiment, he became Honorary Colonel of First
Regiment Royal Horse Artillery and of the 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire
Volunteers in later years and continued to be passionately involved with those
Regiments and their historical heritage.
From 1989
until his death, he worked tirelessly to create a museum of artillery at the
Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. This was known as the Royal Artillery Museum Project
and became Royal Artillery Museums Limited, of which he was Chairman. The
museum opened a year after his death in May 2001 and was known as Firepower. It
housed the vast regimental collection of guns, medals, books and archives and
provided an interactive museum of the history of artillery. The principal
building of the museum was now known as the Farndale Building and a plaque at
the entrance was dedicated to Martin and stated without his vision,
dedication, leadership and commitment, this museum would not exist. The
collection is now the
Royal Artillery Museum.
Martin
became a Freeman
of the City of London and a member of the
Wheelwrights Livery. He was appointed Companion of the Most Honourable
Order of the Bath in 1980 and Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in
1983. He was a member of the
Royal Patriotic Fund. He was Chairman of the Royal United Services
Institute.
His passion
in the Farndale family history and his pioneering work, and meticulous
collection of historical records is the root of the Farndale Story. He put
together family trees on sheets of paper which he would spread out across the
breadth of rooms to show off his latest discovery. In an age before computers
he visited Parish Churches one by one, and explored parish records, taking
meticulous notes to piece together the jigsaw. He had boxes of index cards in
his Study which provided the only means by which to build the family story in a
time when there were no genealogical databases or websites and no computers
with excel spreadsheets and modern tools for word processing. When he came to
write up sections of the story it was done by typewriter. He nevertheless
identified most of the members of the Farndale story through time and found
many of the medieval records which it has been possible to explore more easily
in recent years. The scaffolding of the family history was already complete
long before computers made the task an easier one to undertake.
Perhaps most
importantly, Martin understood the importance of preserving records. He
relentlessly pursued his immediate family to work through their photographs and
make sure they were properly labelled. He also made sure that all those many
documents that seemed so unimportant in their contemporary setting, were
retained to tell their story to future generations. Long after his death, his
sister has often recalled to me how absolutely terrible he was at insisting
photograph albums and other material were subsumed into the family collection.
He also had discussions with members of the wider family and took notes of
their own stories, which have been passed down, and provide first hand records
of their lives. Furthermore, having identified the extended family members
through his genealogical research, he started lines of correspondence with
those members of the family who lived in such places as New Zealand, Canada,
the United States and Australia. He left albums of material which tell the full
story of the history of branches of the family such as the Australians,
including photographs, documents, newspaper clips, explanations and more. The
richness of the material which he left is unique.
When he came
to a dilemma which he couldn’t resolve, he employed professional genealogists
to resolve questions in the family story. There was extensive research into
military histories of individual Farndales. I still have extensive rounds of
correspondence with relatives, genealogists and others, with whom he engaged,
in his relentless pursuit to preserve the heritage of his kin.
Martin Baker
Farndale died at the age of 71 in a London hospital on 10 May 2000. He is
buried at Wensley Church, Wensleydale, in North Yorkshire beside his parents
and in the heart of our family’s historical stage.
In his last
few days in a London Hospital, there was a discussion about the legacy of
family history which he had left. To Martin’s only child, Richard Farndale, the
family history was his Dad’s obsession, a part of his Dad’s world which dated
back as far as he could remember, and regarding which he had dutifully nodded
when family stories were retold, and patiently looked on when yet another
family tree was unfurled for explanation. It was not yet an obsession which had
passed down to the next generation. The richness of the legacy and the
privilege of the unique perspective which it gave, was not yet appreciated.
Foolishly perhaps, as one does during the last days of a life, particularly one
that ended too soon, a promise was made. Personal computers were just beginning
to be used more widely and the internet had recently emerged as a new tool full
of possibility. The promise was made to turn Martin’s work into a website, so
that the family story which Martin had preserved could be enjoyed more widely
by the family and others who might find it of interest. There was a happy glint
in Martin’s eye which embedded itself into his son’s memory. The deal was
sealed. There was no going back.
Twenty
first century genealogy
It was
almost exactly at the moment that Martin Farndale finished his genealogical
research, that exponential new opportunities started to emerge as means by
which a genealogy could be developed. Genealogical databases were created by
such organisations as Ancestry and Find my Past which allowed
most of the records upon which genealogists rely, to be accessed at home from a
personal computer. No longer was it necessary to travel between parish churches
as Martin had done. Medieval records also became accessible and search tools
improved so that over time, searching for a name like Farndale, which bore a
uniqueness that meant that any search revealed helpful information, became much
easier. Archived Newspapers also became accessible so that stories associated
with the names that had already been found brought life to individuals’
experiences. Database tools and hyperlinking between documents provided a new
means to analyse the information as it was collected. Since the information
could be published on a world wide web, members of the wider family came to
find the genealogy and send emails to share their own stories. Photographs
could be scanned and incorporated into the wider story.
The
underlying structure of the research, worked on by Martin since the 1950s and
the meticulous collection of family records that would otherwise have been
lost, provided the underlying basis of the research, without which the later
work would have been too daunting. Martin Farndale’s deep interest in
genealogical story telling was an incentive to explore its boundaries in a new
age of possibilities. It is also extraordinary for a son to work on the same
material worked on by Martin, and solve problems which he was grappling with,
sometimes to solve them with new tools, and in doing so, to feel a
connectedness. I recommend genealogy to pass through generations as a means to
continue to share a family passion through time.
The
genealogical journey has provided a structure from which to explore the history
of the places with which this family have been associated, and to explore the
nation’s story from a particular and unique perspective. It is a direct path
into history which makes its understanding far more profound than a more
isolated exploration of the past. The research has brought me to a direct
perspective on Britain’s history from Roman, Anglo Saxon and Scandinavian
times, to Norman and medieval and later industrial and modern periods. The
simplest form of genealogy is like stamp collecting. It can be fun to build
family trees and collect family members, but it is hard to find passion in the
scaffolding of a family tree. The more profound reward of genealogy is to be
found in the stories and the journeys it takes you on, and the wider historical
context which gives it meaning. When genealogy combines with history, to follow
a more multi disciplinary route, it becomes a far
more powerful tool of exploration.
The Farndale Family Website and the Farndale Story are manifestations of
a passion, that started some time in the 1950s, and has passed to another
generation. It is not a commercial venture, but it is hopefully a source of
material which will be helpful not only to family descendants, but to those
interested in local and social history.