I’ve always rather flippantly referred to myself as half Norman and half Anglo-Saxon, based entirely on the fact that I love France and I love Sussex. But it turns out, I really am.
What began as a casual curiosity about family history led me down a rabbit hole of quarrymen and butlers, Huguenots, Dublin Protestants, Sussex villagers, French connections and Norman ancestors. The deeper I dug, the more unexpected the story became.
Over the border
I knew that my great-grandmother came from Dublin but ended up in the Weald, near Sevenoaks. Not quite Sussex, but close. I also knew her first husband had the surname Rubie, an unusual name, and that he had worked as a butler. And her second husband was Hawkins, a quarryman in the Sevenoaks area. Curious to know more, I started digging and unexpectedly found myself transported to Rye, Icklesham, Battle and Ticehurst. And that felt very Sussex.
The Rubies
My great-grandmother’s first husband was a Rubie and the Rubies came from Rye. And they were not newcomers. They were a long-established local family, with generations living around Rye Harbour and Icklesham, many of them mariners whose lives were tied to the sea. The name itself may have Huguenot origins, which immediately caught my attention. My maternal grandfather’s family have also traced their roots to the Huguenots, making this an intriguing connection, albeit through my grandmother’s first marriage rather than her direct bloodline. Perhaps more surprising still in that I have had over a decade-long and profound love affair with the area of France around La Rochelle and Nantes – where many Huguenots lived and from where they fled.
My Irish great-grandmother had married at the church in Icklesham in 1884. She was beginning to feel much less remote and much more a lady with a long connection to Sussex.
Cue the Hawkins
But my great-grandmother was widowed early and left with two very young children to support. And so unsurprisingly, she married again, this time to an Ernest Hawkins in 1892. My great grandfather, the quarryman. Ernest was born in Ticehurst. And his father, Thomas Hawkins was born in Battle. And his father before him took me straight back to Rye, where he was born in 1790. Suddenly, I was feeling much more Sussex than I had ever realised.
A quick search of the Hawkins surname revealed it appears to have Anglo-Saxon origins, perhaps deriving from an early personal name or, in some cases, a reference to a hawk, the bird of prey. Whatever its precise origins, it seems my claim to be Saxon has roots. But what of my Norman claim?
Cue the Normans
I find myself, perhaps unsurprisingly, drawn more towards the women in my family. So I turned my attention to my great-grandfather’s mother, Eliza Hoadley, born in Ticehurst in 1841. Eliza’s mother was called Philadelphia Chantler. That name (Chantler) pulled me up short because its origins appear to have been Norman. Then I discovered Dinah Vidler. Born in Ticehurst in 1776, she was Philadelphia Chantler’s mother and carried yet another surname that sent me off down a research rabbit hole. The origins of Vidler are debated. Some suggest it derives from an occupational name associated with a fiddler or musician. Others trace it back to Norman French roots. What is beyond dispute is that the name is heavily associated with Sussex, where Vidlers appear in records across the county for centuries. So here I am, very probably a hearty mix of Anglo-Saxon and Norman. Hawkins. Chantler. Vidler.
How Saxon Norman am I?
I kept digging. Dinah Vidler’s father, Samuel Vidler, had been born in Ticehurst in 1740. His father, William Vidler, was born in Ticehurst too and later married in Mountfield before dying in Burwash. And as I dug further, the roads took me back to the Vidlers and Montagues of Battle, as long ago as the early 17th century. Ticehurst. Battle. Mountfield. Burwash. And maybe Normandy too.
Back to the 20th century
Back in the 20th century, one of my grandmother’s siblings, Catherine Ruby Hawkins, later Catherine Ruby Birch, was born in Sevenoaks but eventually found her way to Slindon in West Sussex, where she married Alfred Birch. A place I’ve driven through many times and never realised the connection. Another sibling, Ernest Harold Hawkins, led a life that was rather more adventurous than I had expected. During my research I discovered that he had served in the First World War and taken part in the Battle of Jutland, one of the most significant naval engagements of the conflict.
And what of the quarryman and the girl from Dublin?
The Irish story remains equally intriguing. My great-grandmother was born in Donnybrook, Dublin, but the more I learn, the less straightforward that identity becomes. Her father was a butler. Her first husband was a butler. She married while living in Pimlico, suggesting the family may have spent significant time in London. Donnybrook itself was a fashionable area associated with wealthy Protestant families, raising the possibility that her father may have followed the households he served between England and Ireland.
Anyone who has investigated their family tree will no that it is a puzzle that is never complete. The last piece of that puzzle that I have uncovered is perhaps the most intriguing of all. My great grandfather, the quarryman, is recorded as having died at Long Barn in the Weald. He was a keen gardener. Among the great Anglo-Irish families with links to both Dublin and Sevenoaks were the Sackville-Wests, the family of Knole and the Earls De La Warr, a name woven deeply into Sussex history. I had toyed with the idea that my great great grandfather Robert may have been in service to one of these familes. I’ll probbaly never know.
The mystery of Long Barn
Long Barn is the former home of Vita Sackville-West, where she first developed her passion for gardening before creating Sissinghurst. As a quarryman, my great grandfather’s presence there initially seemed baffling, until I discovered that many men from the declining quarry industry turned to estate gardening as the quarries closed and the labour demands of WWII reshaped the workforce.
It is entirely possible then that Ernest, my great grandfather, became one of them. Whether he ever met Vita, or doffed his cap to the Bloomsbury Group who hung out at Long Barn, I may never know for certain. Whether my great-grandmother Elizabeth had any earlier connection with the Sackville-Wests through domestic service, or whether these are simply remarkable coincidences, I cannot say. But this does feels less like the final piece of one family puzzle and more like the first piece of another. And what I do know now is that I really am part Saxon and part Norman after all.
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