Sleeman genealogy Forest of Dean Cornwall Devon Croydon Coventry Duff Stuart Cummings Pizey Trim
The veracity of information provided is not guaranteed.
I apologise for any errors & omissions.

last updated 14 Nov 2001
 New Faster Site
Bob Sleeman Personal data stored in this computer system are for the sole purpose of genealogy research.  Any other use is prohibited.
Individuals who object to inclusion of their data should contact me by EMail: bob.sleeman@lineone.net.


 

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NEW FASTER SITE

This site is for WEB surfers who have an interest in the genealogy of the Sleeman family.

The links below will download data collected from the England & Wales Registers at the Family Records Centre in London, using Excel Spreadsheet (ver 4).  They will be expanded as I get time for research.

Sleeman Births 1837 - 1885 Sleeman Marriages 1837 - 1874 Sleeman Deaths 1837 - 1868

Use the map to help locate registration districts in Cornwall, Devon and Gloucestershire.

Also Maps for:  Penzance   Camborne, Falmouth & Truro  Bodmin & St Austell  Padstow & Wadebridge 

Liskeard, Plymouth & Tavistock  Launceston   Bideford & Holsworthy  Barnstaple   Okehampton   Tavistock

Forest of Dean

I've added some items of interest about members of the family I know, but there are many more of my generation from the Forest of Dean branch of the family with whom I have lost touch.  My Father was brought up in the "island" between Wales and England, cut off by the rivers Severn and Wye. He left there in his twenties and has lived in Coventry ever since.  We visited the  Forest regularly in the 1960s while his mum was alive, but since then my visits have been infrequent.

One book that contains some pictures of the Forest of Dean Sleeman family is "Highest Point of Dean" by Maurice V Bent (ISBN 0 9510752 0 9).

The life in the Forest from Victorian times until the outbreak of war in 1939 was very isolated from the "mainland".  A good book that describes this period was written by Winifred Foley "A Child in the Forest". She gives some insight into hard times and lack of jobs during the period that my father's generation were growing up.

The life since then has changed dramatically with the closure of the pits (coal mines) and the arrival of the car.  The television playwright Dennis Potter grew up on the edge of the Forest.  Perhaps his most evocative work is "The Changing Forest" (1962) [Published by Minerva - ISBN 0-7493-8643-6] where he describes the fabric of a world whose old ways are yielding to the new; habits altering; expectations growing; work, leisure, language itself changing under the impact of the new television, of commercial jingles and the early Elvis.

You may find his work disturbing or even offensive, but try "The Singing Detective" [on video - BBCV 54465/6] or "Blue Remembered Hills". The change in the UK more generally is conveyed both in the Dennis Potter biography by W. Stephen Gilbert [Fight & Kick & Bite - published by Sceptre - ISBN 0-340-64048-0] and in Potter's many "plays" for television. 

His early and controversial TV play "Son of Man", the Wednesday Play for 16 April 1969, also reflects the reality of the non-conformist Christian community in the Forest.  The Bible had come to seem almost a local document.
The Dead Sea was the large dreary pond near a pit, edged with reed, stones and scraggy trees whose roots twisted back to the surface like half-buried arms in a poisoned soil.
The valley of the shadow of death - trees arched their black tops above the gauged-out lane falling to the bottom of Joyford, an overhung, shadowy, stumbly lane where people walked quickly, whistling.

All this is a far cry from the Manhattan skyline of Croydon, my home since 1972, or the City of London, where I work. 

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