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David Wood’s story this time goes back to the original Woodstock, which started in 1809; he talks about the tracing back of his family tree over 200 years ago “how time flies.”

David starts by saying, his dad’s family all came from Woodstock which is along Broadfield Road, past the old chapel and by the old derelict farmhouse.

I have traced them back to 1809 and that is where they stayed until 1956 when the cottage was demolished.

My grandmother’s family were from Bollington in Cheshire and the reason she came to be living in the village, was because her mother died when she was a baby. She was fostered by her uncle and aunt, Edwin and Frances Beard around 1880, they had a shop in Temperance place.

She married my grandfather Walter and settled in Woodstock to raise her own family. They moved to Burnaby Road after the cottage in Woodstock was demolished in 1956.

The house in Burnaby Road was a house directly opposite the school gates in Burnaby Road and granddad stood in for Santa Claus for the nursery class back in the late fifties., with the real Santa’s permission of course.

If you can, have a try at tracing your family tree, it is amazing the information you can turn up, I found out that my great grandmother, Walter’s mum, was born in France. Can you imagine stumbling across that when no one had thought to mention to you when you were growing up, or, perhaps they didn’t know.

My mum’s family mostly lived in the village except for my uncle Bill who liked to live dangerously and moved all the way down to Bank Street in Tunstall. The Nixon and Stanfield families, who my mum descended from, were living in Goldenhill as early as 1850.

My late mother in law was born in Victoria Street and my wife was born at the top of Birchenwood Road or Station Bank as it was called then.