It was around 1995 that I came across an advert that caught my attention – how I could ‘research my family history’. Curious, I thought, maybe I can find my grandparents, so I decided to give it a try.  My mums maiden name was Bletcher and was pretty unusual – so I figured that was a good place to start.

What I didn’t expect was the wealth of information.

I started with the surname ‘Bletcher’ and I knew Grandad was Harry; I found him in the 1901 census, along with his parents and brothers and sisters.

Then came one of those strange coincidences that makes you stop – Grandad was born in 1898, the family were living at 28 Store Street, Manchester. That might sound like just another address – but not to me. At, at the time I was working in a building on Store Street. The very same street my Grandad had called home nearly a century earlier. As I delved deeper, I found out that Harry and my gran were married in a church just around the corner from my workplace.

From that moment I was hooked. Tracing my family history became more than a curiosity – it became a passion. Every census record, every birth certificate, every old photograph I found added a new piece to the puzzle. There were moments of frustration – records lost, names misspelled, leads that led nowhere – but there were also those moments of magic. The kind that make your heart skip a beat because, in some small way, you’ve connected with someone from your past.

It’s been a journey of surprises and discoveries, but more than anything, it’s given me a deeper understanding of where I come from—and a greater appreciation for the lives and stories that came before me.

and my journey began……