Once I had established that my grandfather was a Harwell man, then it was a comparatively simple matter to trace his ancestors back. This was because the family had remained more or less static in Harwell from the beginning of Parish Registers.
I was also fortunate insofar as the incumbent in the mid 16th century (Hugh Lloide) had followed the directions regarding Parish Registers and his were written up, in a good legible hand, from the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Some of the beginning and end pages of the first Register have suffered from the ravages of time but very little has been lost, and the Register has received expert restoration/preservation work from the Bodleian Library.
None of the 1558 entries are readable; the first name that it is possible to read (in 1559) is Talbot. From that time to the present, all of the Talbot entries in Harwell Registers (with the few exceptions I shall detail in a moment) belong to the one family who have maintained an unbroken presence in the village which continues to this day.
From 1629 to 1642 Matthew Talbot and his wife Margery had five children Baptised at St Matthews. I cannot fit this group into my family with any degree of certainty. There is the possibility that Matthew was my 8xG-Grandfather into a second marriage. Matthew's wife Susan had died in January 1625/6, and Matthew himself died in January 1642/3 so a second marriage is feasible. However, this would mean that Matthew was producing a second batch of children between his 59th and 72nd years. If it was the same Matthew, then it seems that he must have won a new bride who was a lot younger than himself. As I can find no descendants from, or marriages for, the children of Matthew and Margery they make no difference to the overall scheme so I have not included them, not even as 'maybe' entries.
The only other Talbot entry in the Registers which does not fit into the family is a burial on 4th December 1939. You may be aware that the site now occupied by the Atomic Energy Research Establishment was formerly an airfield. In 1937 RAF Harwell opened as a bomber station, and remained so until the site was handed over to the AERE in January 1946. During that time there were quite a few Air Force lads (plus one German airman) buried in the local churchyard, and not one of them was a local boy. The Talbot entry refers to Sergeant Gerald R.C.Talbot, of RAF Harwell, age 22, killed with four others in a crash on Exmoor. To find something about him, I looked at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website (www.cwgc.org). The site informed me that he was Sgt/Observer 580855 Gerald Roland Cecil Talbot, his age was 22, that he was killed on Tuesday 28th November 1939, and is buried at Harwell, grave number 632. These records invariably show "son of Mr and Mrs [forename or initials] Talbot, of [location]". In this case - nothing, so I was none the wiser. Should anyone read this who can tell me anything about Gerald Roland Cecil Talbot, then I will be most interested to hear from them.
The Talbot family has maintained an unbroken presence in Harwell for 450 years. In 1998 Harry Talbot, son of Michael and Janice, was born. He is the first male representative of the 15th generation of descendants of Thomas and Alice Talbot to live in Harwell.
From this main stem of the Harwell Talbots, I have built up a family tree which at the moment stands at 5,630 people - although only 794 of these were born with the surname Talbot. Their geographical location spreads far and wide, but in the earlier days the Vale of The White Horse holds most of them. The 'other names' coming into my family appear in my "Sisters and Cousins and Aunts" page. If you want to visit that page, then click here.
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