The Baker Family History

The Bakers of Highfields

The history and genealogy of the Baker family

Architects, Surgeons and Gentlemen

Home Page The home page of the Farndale family website of which this section is a part

Baker Home Page The Home page of the Baker family part of the website

The Baker Directory The Baker Family directory which is not yet compiled

Baker History Notes on the Baker family history

The Baker Family Tree The Baker Family Tree, which is the best way to search the family history

General Sir Martin Farndale KCB

Welcome to the history of the Baker Family

Highfields in about 1900 Richard Baker (1676 to 1749) William Baker of Highfields (1705 to 1771) Richard Dod Baker (1784 to 1807) William Baker of Highfields (1787 to 1863)

Introduction to this website The purpose of this web site is to make available genealogical and historical information about the Baker Family. This website is the culmination of work started in the 1980s by Martin Farndale (the son of Margaret Louisa nee Baker, later Farndale), and continued by his son Richard Farndale since 2023. Martin Farndale began researching the Farndale Family in 1956, but started to work on his mother’s families, the Bakers and the Halls in the 1980s. General Sir Martin Farndale KCB died in May 2000. During his lifetime, he carried out extensive research into the Farndale family history. He also undertook work in the 1980s into the Baker family, from whom his mother was descended. This part of the Farndale family website has been compiled by his son, Richard Farndale and continues this research which is made available to anyone who may be interested. Margaret Louisa (“Peggy”) Baker (1901 to 1996) (BAK00002) was the daughter of Arthur Baker (1860 to 1916)(BAK00155) and the great great great granddaughter of William Baker (1705 to 1771)(BAK00068), the Architect. She was the current website author’s granny. She married Alfred Farndale (1897 to 1987)(FAR00683). She taught physical education at Malvern Girl’s school and was one of the first of her generation to buy a car. She developed a spirit of rebellion, independence, and cheerfulness that was to characterise her life. She and Alfred were pioneers in the prairies of Alberta and later settled in Yorkshire and their large family, the Wensleydale Line, still thrives. Peggy was proud of her Baker ancestry and had many records and stories about the family. She enjoyed helping Martin Farndale with his research into her family.	The best way to view this site Whilst you can view this site on a mobile or tablet, it is primarily intended for use on a PC. This is because the site is intended for the provision of detailed information, more suited to the larger format of a PC. However, it does work quite well on a tablet, such as an ipad. On an iphone it may sometimes tend to be distorted with text not always aligning, though you can generally read text and it should work ok with an iphone too. Your interest in the site This site is relevant to those whose name is Baker, or who know they are descended from Bakers of Highfields. If this describes you, then you should be able to discover a lot of information about your ancestors. If you have information which you can share, please help me by getting in touch. If you have an interest in Baker family history and particularly the information provided here: · First please tell your cousins and other relatives about the site. · Second, please contact me by email to rcfarndale@hotmail.com. This will encourage me to develop the research. It is hoped that anyone able to provide more information about the Baker family history, will e-mail Richard Farndale at rcfarndale@hotmail.com,  so that I can develop the available information and make corrections where you can point those out to me. What you will find when you explore this website This website assists those who are a part of the wider Baker family, or otherwise linked to it, to gain a greater understanding of their history and ancestral origins. It provides vertical context to enable you to trace back your ancestry through time directly. It provides horizontal context by providing information about the wider family of which you are a part. Personal Information I do not wish to record detailed information about living Bakers unless I know that you are happy for me to do so. This site is about historic Bakers who are no longer alive. As a rule I only record the most basic publicly available information about living Bakers, primarily their month of birth. This is so that anyone who wishes, can find themselves in the directory, and then use this site to explore their ancestry. Where I am aware of public information about living Bakers, on their own websites, or public entries on the web which is available already, I have sometimes included that information on personal pages of living Bakers. If you find your own entry on this website and would like me to include more information about you, please let me know. Please don’t provide me with any information you would not wish to be publicly available. I think it is very unlikely that I have recorded any information on the site which people would prefer to keep private, but if there is any information on this site which you would prefer not to appear, please email me at rcfarndale@hotmail.com,  and I will remove it. Peggy Baker (later Farndale) and the Baker family at Highfields in about 1990
A Simple Guide to using the website The best way to explore the Baker family history is to start with the Baker family tree. You can then click on the links for individuals to find out more about particular members of the wider family. There is also a timeline, which provides a chronological history of the family. There is also a History of Highfields.	Projected programme for this website Having worked on the material which Martin Farndale collected in the 1980s, and drawn the history of the Bakers together with modern search methods, I have now reverted to work on the Farndale family. I may do some more work on the Baker family history in future, and will certainly do so as more information is made available to me.	Related Families Many other families will be able to link to the Farndale Family Tree. There are more detailed records of closely related families as follows: The Farndale Family The Hall Line

History of this website

Martin Farndale’s historical research into the Farndales began: 1956

Martin Farndale’s historical research into the Bakers began: 1980s

The Baker Family part of the Farndale website First Published by Richard Farndale: 1 October 2023

Peering back into our deep history:

The village in fact was like a deep-running cave still linked to its antic past, a cave whose shadows were cluttered by spirits and by laws still vaguely ancestral. This cave that we inhabited looked backwards through chambers that led to our ghostly beginnings; and had not, as yet, been tidied up, or scrubbed clean by electric light, or suburbanized by a Victorian church, or papered by cinema screens. It was something we just had time to inherit, to inherit and dimly know – the blood and beliefs of generations who had been in this valley since the Stone Age. That continuous contact has at last been broken, the deeper caves sealed off for ever. But arriving, as I did, at the end of that age, I caught whiffs of something old as the glaciers. There were ghosts in the stones, in the trees, and the walls, and each field and hill had several. The elder people knew about these things and would refer to them in personal terms, and there were certain landmarks about the valley – tree-clumps, corners in woods – that bore separate, antique, half-muttered names that were certainly older than Christian. The women in their talk still used these names which are not used now any more. There was also a frank and unfearful attitude to death, and an acceptance of violence as a kind of ritual which no one accused or pardoned. In our grey stone village, especially in winter, such stories never seemed strange. When I sat at home among my talking sisters, or with an old woman sucking her jaws, and heard the long details of hapless suicides, of fighting men loose in the snow, of witch-doomed widows disembowelled by bulls, of childeating sows, and so on – I would look through the windows and see the wet walls streaming, the black trees bend in the wind, and I saw these things happening as natural convulsions of our landscape, and though dry-mouthed, I was never astonished.

Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee, 1959