Time Travel
Some reflections on a new approach to
genealogy and historical research to allow families to come into contact with
their deep ancestral history
The Farndale Family Website is the product of two
generations of research over seventy years. The rooting of the family name to a
small place in North Yorkshire has made it possible to identify the whole
modern family, and then to follow its history deep into the past. It has both a
breadth and depth in its scope.
In building
on the research and in trying to make it more accessible, the research has
increasingly drawn out the historical narrative to make it more digestible. Whilst
rooted in historical research, founded on a meticulous assimilation of the sources
of historical evidence, a family history must in the end become a narrative,
drawing out the story from the underlying facts. It is inevitable that a
historical journey is a story of time travel, transporting us back to different
times, and aiming to grasp at the experiences and perceptions of each of the
locations in time where our Tardis lands. It is not a misplaced ambition
for this particular family story to aspire to time travel, since it was Joseph
Farndale, the Chief Constable of Bradford, who invented the police box
without which there would never have been a Tardis.
The generational
perspective of this research has built up an evolving methodology to find a
balance between maintaining a firm anchor in the underlying historical facts,
as a scientist intends, whilst drawing out the emotions and the worlds of the
narrative through story telling, as an artist,
drawing on historical records, photographs, paintings, literature, accounts
particularly contemporaneous ones and other such sources. The Farndale Story uses a matrix through
time to transport those interested in the story of the family, of Yorkshire and
of a path through the national story, to the principal building blocks of the
overall narrative, but allowing time travellers to take whatever path they
choose. It is not intended to be read like a book, but followed as a journey,
with many junctions leading to different places. It is a new approach to
studying history, which possibly better reflects the flow of time.