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

Home Page Return to the Home Page of the Farndale Family Website

The Farndale Story The story of one family’s journey through two thousand years of British History

The Farndale Lineages The 84 family lines into which the family is divided. Meet the historical family and how the wider family is related

The Farndale Directory Members of the historical family ordered by date of birth

Themes Links to other pages with historical research and related material

Related Family Stories The story of the Bakers of Highfields, the Chapmans, and other related families

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 Yorkshire and Cleveland.

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 Chapman Family. There is also a simpler genealogical exploration of the Chapman Family of Walter Chapman.

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 about 1500. 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: 7 October 2024

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 you can generally read text.

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.