I was also contacted a few weeks ago by Celia and Gerry Hawkins who now live in Brundall but have very close connections with Hethersett. They were kind enough to send me a whole host of photographs with permission to reproduce them in my various media and publications.
So I will be popping some of them on this blog over the next couple of weeks. Once the lockdown is over I will be going to meet Celia and Gerry to get their memories down on paper.
You will find the first two photographs above. I love them both. Celia was born and brought up in Hethersett and the top one shows Fred and Agnes Rumsey (Celia's paternal grandparents) with their children - Walter Rumsey (Celia's father), Gladys and baby Joyce. Joyce married Sonny Brown and their children Barry and Clive still live in the village.
I think the other photo is one of the most evocative I have seen of the village. It shows members of the village youth club making a free delivery of wood to the elderly of Hethersett. This delivery is to Agnes and Fred Rumsey. Celia and Gerry have been able to identify a Mr Parfitt on the left and Brian Blake on the right).
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Here's an interesting conundrum for those of you interested in genealogy and family history. We all know that (in general terms) you have two parents and four grandparents. Then if you follow this down the generations you will have eight great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents and 32 great great great grandparents.
So follow this further down the generations and it goes 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, 4,096, 8,192, 16,384, 32,768, 65,536, 131,072, 262,144, 524,288, 1,048,576. So you only have to go back 20 generation to have over one million ancestors. Assuming that each generation is a span of 30 years (in very general terms) it would mean that in the 15th century you had over one million ancestors. Take this back to the Norman Conquest - another 12 generations and that figure would be well over four billion which is patently ridiculous because that would be more people than alive on the earth at that time.
I have tried on numerous occasions to work out how this could be and it's all a question of inter-relationship marriages and many other things that are beyond my comprehension. But at least when somebody tells you that "we are all related in some way" you will know they are talking sense.