Hayletts & Wilsons

My father was a Haylett and my mother a Wilson. Both are proud families, the former Norfolk fishermen and farmers who have been traced back many generations, the latter members of Clan Gunn who settled at Bannockburn and found fame and fortune from the design and weaving of tartans. Over the next few weeks I plan to record a brief history of these families.

Researching family trees is a popular pastime but I have had to do little to satisfy my curiosity as both families have been researched by earlier family members. My father's uncle Bob, who retired early from the police force, spent many years researching the Hayletts and had good access to parish records which, in those days, were kept in the churches where they originated. In the Wilsons' case, research was carried out by a cousin of my mother's, and my mother then simplified the wealth of available information when she wrote my father and her own biographies.

We have visited the areas where the two families were based. The Hayletts are very localised, their home territory running from Happisburg in the north to Great Yarmouth in the south, largely along the Norfolk coastline. The first written record of the Hayletts is from Lessingham, above, a Robert Heylett, who was recorded as dying in 1468. The Haylett name is now found in many parts of the world but all these people are likely to be descended from men originating in this area.

Such is not true of the Wilsons. The name came from an abbreviation of the name William, so Will's-son, so it arose in many areas independently. It is common in England but relatively even more common in Scotland. Our Wilsons are descended from men who were members of Clan Gunn - collectively these Wilsons have been described as a 'sept' of the clan. The Gunns are a small clan based in Sutherland, in the northeast of Scotland, one member of which, John Wilson, is recorded as living in Stirling in 1727 though the family soon moved south to the Bannockburn area (above).

A Chinese Visitor

Our back garden looks out across a large field which is, this year, down to winter wheat. At the height it has now reached it is usually empty of life except for the occasional uncontrolled dog, but last night we spotted something moving in it

It was a Chinese water deer, a species which we've seen once before but never as close to human habitation.

The animal is taking a risk as the field is bounded on one side by public football fields, much used by dog walkers, and on two sides by footpaths, so it wasn't surprising that....

....the animal was constantly interrupting its enjoyment of the farmer's wheat to look around.

While we were watching it a dog walker passed quite close. The deer's reaction was to bob down until the danger had passed before resuming its meal.

A close look at the pictures suggests that the deer has an injury on its right flank, perhaps the result of an encounter with a large dog.

This wasn't quite as exciting as watching buck from the Saadani hide but it's good to see wildlife venturing close to human habitation. Certainly, its visit gave us some pleasure.

Buck at Saadani Hide

The waterhole at the Saadani hide - see earlier post here - brought in a number of different antelope species, of which the most frequent visitors were waterbuck. Some magnificent bulls came to drink, usually alone, and usually extremely warily - so they would stand around a few metres from the edge of the pool for some time, watching and sensing the air, before they approached it to drink.

Female waterbuck tended to arrive in small groups with their young but had the advantage that some could drink while others kept watch.

As their name suggests, waterbuck are found around water and on one occasion a young bull took a swim in the pool - but then had considerable difficulty in getting out again.

The buck were right to be wary: lion also used the waterhole. We never saw them but their tracks were not infrequently visible round the pool.

Bushbuck are timid animals which prefer a forest habitat. I only saw two in the many hours spent at the hide and both seemed ill-at-ease. They have a strange, hunched-up posture and rely more on camouflage and keeping a low profile than on speed to avoid predators.

This one is a female seen in evening light.

If bushbuck are difficult to see then the sitatunga, or marsh buck, is an even more unusual sight: this one was the first I had ever seen. It shouldn't have been here at all. While it is found in Tanzania, it's an inhabitant of swampy places and operates mainly in the half-light of dawn or dusk, and in the night, yet here it is at the waterhole in a dry area at five in the afternoon.

Trucks & Trains

Heaven knows why we brought these with us when we moved from Scotland but we rediscovered them the other day in a box in the big cupboard in the spare room. They aren't in bad condition, except for the articulated car carrier which has tractor and trailer by different manufacturers.

We had a considerable collection of cars - Dinky and Matchbox - as well but they didn't come with us.

In the box with the trucks is this little collection of railway stock.

We don't particularly want to keep any of this - we have plenty enough clutter already - so, unless someone screams, we'll probably dispose of all of it.

1992

Many of the relatively few pictures we have from the early 1990s don't have dates on them but I think this is 1992. It shows the extended family in the conservatory at Lodge Road, with my mother at left, Gill's mother Bea next to her, and Gill's father Don at the back on the right, with Lizzie's Tom at the back.

Rachael was already being trained to play soccer and cricket, with David her coach. While she never pursued cricket, she continued to play football for many years, and I'm quite sure that David's encouragement set her on the road to the enjoyment she still has of all kinds of sports.

The Mantel Clock

This mantel clock belonged to George Albert Rogers, Gill's grandfather on her father's side. The story is that, at some point in his career, he was a travelling salesman and he swapped it for some of his wares. George Rogers went on to own a company called Phoenix, which had a factory in Stoke-on-Trent which made tiled fire surrounds, and he did very well out of it.

We had the clock at Lodge Road where it sat, very appropriately, on the marble mantelpiece in the front room. When it was there and, later, at Matenderere, we had the chimes working, and there was something very homely about their sound - except if you were trying to watch television or lying in bed listening to them on a long, sleepless night.

In our present small house the clock sits forlornly on top of the sideboard in the sitting room because it doesn't really fit anywhere else, so it's too out-of-reach to wind up. Even if we had it working I don't think we'd want it chiming: we'd never get any sleep.

The Photograph

When I trim my beard I do it at my work table in the garage where there's a convenient power point and plenty of light. The mirror I use came from my father. I'm not sure how old it is but I'm fairly certain he had it in East Africa.

By the time I've finished the trim there are hairs all over the mirror and caught between the mirror and the frame, so I clean them off with a small paint brush. Perhaps I was doing this unusually vigorously yesterday because the brush excavated, from between the mirror surface and the wood frame at the bottom of the mirror....

....a small piece of a negative from a black-and-white photograph.

It shows the wheels of an old aeroplane on what looks like a dirt runway and, beyond them, what is almost certainly a man in a calf-length dark coat and long trousers.

The picture is of no huge interest except that it raises all sorts of questions, few of which are likely to have an answer - like, was the photograph my father's, where was it taken, what sort of aeroplane is it, and why should it have been so important that the negative was kept in a bedroom mirror?