Catholic Brailes

Brailes is a lovely village in Oxfordshire - out of the way and a little off the beaten track.

Not a bad thing!

I admit that a year or so ago I had never heard of it but then my cousins wife, Linda, did some family history research for me and I found that my fathers paternal line sprang from Brailes.

Their lives were middling - gamekeeprs, saddle & harness makers, coal merchants but what stuck out and answered a question that had hung over me for a lifetime was that they were Catholic.

English Catholic.

I always wondered how I was Catholic and yet all the kids at my Grammar School were of either Irish or Polish decent. Now I know.

And what a history Brailes has.

I will be returning here time and again.