The Time Traveller’s Handbook

The Bakers Home Page Return to the Home Page of the Bakers Family part of the website

The Bakers of Highfields Story The Story of the Dods and Bakers and of Highfields, Fenton House and Hasfield Court. A journey through the history of Cheshire and Staffordshire, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman who retained his lands after the Conquest, pottery at Stoke on Trent, an encounter with Elgar, and the history of an Elizabethan manor house at Audlem

The Bakers of Highfields The family tree of the Bakers of Highfields

The Dod Family The Family Tree of the Dods, predecessors to the Bakers of Highfields

The Bakers of Fenton House and Hasfield Court The Family Tree of the pottery Bakers of Stoke on Trent

The Bellyse Family The Family Tree of the Bellyse Family

The Farndale Story The main part of this website tells the story of the Farndale family from Yorkshire Descendants of Arthur Baker, the story of the Farndale ancestry is told through the main part of this website You can also return to the Farndale website home page

The Hall Family The genealogy of the family of James Hall, linked to the Baker family through marriage to Arthur Baker

Return to the Baker Story

Invitation to travel through 2,000 years of British History

This is the story of one large extended family and its footsteps through the history of Britain, focused on …

Who should use this story to travel through time?

Family

The first purpose of this website is to make available the genealogical research to all who are descended from the Baker family, whether or not they continue to adopt the surname. For that purpose the Baker Story may provide the best starting place, but you can also return to the home page of the website and explore your own ancestry in detail, finding the family trees of the Bakers of Highfields, the Dod Family, the Bakers of Fenton Court and Hasfield Court, the Bellyse Family and explore your own unique story.

Those interested in Cheshire’s past

…

Historians

The family story also goes to the heart of the national story. It is a family’s eyewitness account of the origins of the English nation, …

Genealogists

The Farndale Family Website, from which the Farndale Story and the Baker Story derives, provides a novel approach to genealogy which has built on the important but more mechanical processes of sifting records of births, deaths and marriages, and census records, to build stories onto the genealogical framework. It has used two generations of family research experience to explore new approaches to provide depth and story telling, to push the possibilities of genealogy to its maximum. It recognises the constraints of genealogical research before the time of parish records, but has not shied from a methodology to provide detailed medieval genealogical analysis, using models of relationship to present the earliest history of the family’s deep ancestry. It uses the author’s professional legal experience in the application of rules of evidence to present a genealogy which meets the higher standard of proof where that is possible, but presents the probable, more likely than not, analysis when certainty is impossible. It finds ways to push beyond perceptions of constraints on genealogy to provide breadth (the story of a whole family) and depth (probing into medieval records) and it also explores how, when the genealogical research can go no further, historical research can continue to tell the family story into deeper time.

Using the Time Traveller’s Handbook

The Baker Story comprises a matrix of stories, each taking you on a journey into the past.

Please start by reading the Prologue, top centre of the matrix.

You can travel through time by exploring these stories in any order you like, or you could take a more structured approach. The main story is told through numbered Acts, of which there are 10, with links to them in bold red text. You can explore these in any order, but it would make more sense to start with Act 1 – the Bakers and Highfields about six rows down the Matrix. I suggest that you then follow the story in the numbered order, which will first take you back in time through the history of the ancestral lands of the family, and then take you forward in time. It’s up to you though. Just go where the mood takes you.

You will find the Local Story Explainers in purple text. These provide more depth which you might like to explore as you read the main story. They tell of local places and historical events, and of historical factors which influenced our family. You will find the Explainers adjacent to the Stories to which they apply.

Further context is provided by the National Story Explainers, which gives a wider perspective to the family and local history.

You can also meet a few select individuals from the family, who best illustrate our story at different periods of time. Whilst you can find every member of our extended family from the Farndale genealogies, the individuals here comprise a few folk who help to tell the main story. Again you will find the individuals adjacent to the Stories of which they are a part.

You can also find some detail about objects and places which tell our family story. The Story of our family in thirty places and objects. If you find yourself in Yorkshire, you could visit these places. Whilst one object is in the British Museum, the places are otherwise clustered around the North York Moors, the Dales, the Vales of York and Pickering, and Cleveland. These pages will tell you how to get there and what you will see. If you can’t get there, they will describe the places and objects, to help you visit them virtually. Again you will find the objects and places adjacent to the Stories to which they apply.

On each page you will find hyperlinks. These will generally take you to the more detailed research in pages on the wider website.

At the top and bottom of each page you will find a link back to the main matrix. At the bottom of the Story pages, you will also find a link to the next chapter. So if you want to read the story in order, you don’t have to return to the Matrix each time.

Our Ability to Time Travel

We know that …

Some final advice for Time Travellers

The Time Traveller’s Matrix is a historical observation tool. When you travel back in time, avoid the perils of the predestination paradox, but enjoy reading and observing our story. Absorb the stories, and let your imagination stretch out the family tales, to provide perspective to the regional and national story. Use these building blocks to understand your own story alongside the wider local and national story. Notice the historical repetition, that reverberates into the contemporary age.

Now it’s time to explore The Matrix.