Coincidence - An Hair Raising Coincidence by Janet Few

 Over the next month I will be adding some wonderful, coincidence, stories from amazing authors. Today, we have a story that will send a shiver down your spine. Please meet Janet Few and this is her coincidence story...

In the early 1980s, I set off with my new-born daughter to house-hunt in Buckinghamshire, as my late husband had been posted there for work. Neither of us had any Buckinghamshire connections. As we did not have a car at the time, we concentrated our search on the town of Aylesbury, where my husband was to be working.  We viewed half a dozen houses. There was one that warranted a second visit but was on the main road, another older property that was opposite a school, one modern house on Bedgrove Estate, one that backed on to the wall of the local prison and one that seemed to have been built on a flood plain. None were quite right. Inevitably, estate agents ignored our ‘wish list’ which specified that we wanted to be in the town and also sent details of properties in the surrounding villages. At the last minute, one of my husband’s new colleagues offered to drive us to a viewing out of town and this one resonated. So, we moved into Green End Street, Aston Clinton, a few miles from Aylesbury. The road name always reminded me of something that Enid Blyton might have invented. We spent three years living there and my daughter was christened in the local church.

Then, another job move allowed us to return to the Isle of Wight, where our hearts were. Another daughter was born and was christened in a Devon church with family associations. My elder daughter was sad that her baptism had not been in a similarly significant ancestral location.

I had been tracing my family history for a number of years, researching families in London, Sussex, The West Country and Northumberland. This was long before genealogy was the online experience that it is today. Research involved visits to London and with two small children, was a protracted process. Imagine my surprise when, a few years after leaving Aston Clinton, I discovered that my great grandmother had been born in Buckinghamshire. This despite my uncle’s insistence that the family came from Cumbria. As I delved deeper into this family’s story, it became apparent that they did not just come from Buckinghamshire but from Aston Clinton itself. Gradually, I learned more about my great great grandmother, Ann Stratford, who was born about 1835 and who earned a living plaiting straw for bonnets. 

Eagerly I set off for a London research trip, planning to locate Ann in the 1851 census. In those days, census returns were accessed by winding one’s way through microfilms, impatiently scanning down the lists of names for the one that was sought. There she was! Ann Stratford, aged 15, a plaiter, born in Aston Clinton, living with her father and step-mother. I cast my eyes to the left-hand column. Would there be a precise address, or would this be one of those instances where it merely gave the village name? As I looked at the address column, hairs stood up on the back of my neck – Green End Street! My elder daughter had been baptised in the same church as her great great great grandmother and several ancestors from earlier generations.

Was it then coincidence that led us to live in Green End Street? Perhaps. Or was it some deep buried genetic memory that drew us there?

Janet Few

Janet Few is an internationally known family and community historian who has written several non-fiction books and two historical novels. Further details can be found on her website https://thehistoryinterpreter.wordpress.com

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Pauline