Thistle Dew Family Research

09/07/2026

Incredible craftsmanship!

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1FEq9EmeH7/

09/04/2026

There's a great deal of information available from the CWGC. If you're interested in finding out more about your ancestors, please message me.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1KpxVX2NXH/

09/02/2026

When I'm digging, I have absolutely no respect for a decent bedtime hour...

08/31/2026

Such a sad end.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19DgHq1CVm/

“He was all that one would wish England’s noblest sons to be”.

Sub-Lieutenant Rupert Chawner Brooke

Rupert was born in Rugby, Warwickshire.

He had brilliant academic success and was an acclaimed poet.

He moved easily through the highest echelons of British cultural life and gained the admiration of many literary titans.

Following a severe emotional and mental breakdown in 1912–1913, he spent a year travelling across North America and the South Seas.

He spent happy months in Tahiti, writing some of his finest pre-war poetry, before returning to England just before the outbreak of the war.

He enlisted immediately war was declared.

Serving with the Royal Navy’s Hood Battalion he saw action in the defence of Antwerp in October 1914.

He was bitten by a mosquito while en route to Gallipoli in 1915. The bite became infected and he died of blood poisoning on 23rd April.

Probably his most famous poem was The Soldier, written in 1914.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke was 27 years old.

He lies in an isolated grave in a “corner of a foreign field” on the Greek Island of Skyros.

08/30/2026

🤣🤣🤣

08/30/2026

Mark Stanford I have no idea why this made me think of you and your motley crew 😏

08/28/2026

Things can become very complicated ;)

https://www.facebook.com/reel/419901193976453

08/26/2026

😂🤷‍♀️

08/24/2026

Fascintating!

One of the most famous church doors in the world, this Romanesque masterpiece is the entrance to the Church of St Mary and St David at Kilpeck in Herefordshire.

Completed around 1135, this was the work of a group of sculptors and stonemasons known today as the Herefordshire School of Masons, they took influences from the great Romanesque cathedrals of France, Portugal and Spain but blended that with the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and even Celtic religious art that still existed around them at the time to create something completely unique.

We see warriors bearing arms, writhing dragons, a green man and a multitude of angels, animals, demons and mythological characters on the tympanum above. Zoom in and just look at the bizarre faces clustered around the arch, one face even has a tongue consisting of two snakes.

The giant serpents on the pillars are interesting, squirming upwards on one and downwards on the other. The meaning of them is still very much up for debate but in my opinion it’s not that difficult to see. Each snake appears to be shedding its skin, the discarded version of itself left lifeless as the serpent writhes away. This could symbolise the act of leaving one’s sinful life behind, or even the daily act of shedding one’s normal self to enter the sanctity of the church.

The green man seems to be reinforce this idea, placed at head height perhaps to remind the congregation that the Word is all around them. He disgorges an acanthus, the same plant depicted on the tympanum, representing the Tree of Life. I really don’t think that conversion had anything to do with the sculptures of Kilpeck, 1135 was far too late for that.

One could stand in front of this incredible doorway for ages just pondering on its mysteries, it’s such a highly concentrated and complex knot of symbolism, before you even start on the 82 bizarrely sculpted corbels that ring the church roof!

08/24/2026

I was very pleased to help a friend with the research for the Canadian side of this post 👇

Cecil George Towler

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JZVcCZEqZ/

*** Also, if you're looking for more interesting stories from Darren Norton, please see:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Darren-Norton/author/B0GCNF4V47/allbooks?fbclid=IwY2xjawT5cgxwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMU9JVXpkT0NyZlU2V2ltbnpzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeEwl7BpVUyWjW2doLduIGbDTot1q-nPmxn-hIMdEi1qWZBaOnI8WkvwsiHGM_aem_UbooYphi2OxZMOLPYRnP8A

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