I continue to look at the records from 1302 to the 1400s that I found in my search on the National Archives (UK) website. It is a curiosity partially and to see if I am able to link any of them together by the Blake individual named. Learning about Blake in the 1300s will be interesting. By the 1400s there are a number of definite Blake areas but is this number smaller in the 1300s? Perhaps one accomplishment I am looking for is creating interest in descendants carrying Blake yDNA to be tested. Obviously, already, we have a number of lines known in the yDNA study at FT DNA. Linking these larger groups back into known areas of the British Isles is very interesting and in some cases that has happened. Some of the large groups though do not have a positive UK match and that would be handy. I do consider my brother's matches to be definitely of the Andover/Upper Clatford Blake family since my father was born in Eastleigh (near Southampton) and his father at Upper Clatford. However, I have not asked any of my Blake cousins to test. Partly because I do not know them personally and Ivan (my 2nd cousin (mother was a Blake)) did not know them either since he was a young child when he did stay in Upper Clatford during World War II. That is definitely one aim that I am looking at as I meander through the records. There is also the possibility of linking information which is a bonus.
When I visited Upper Clatford with my cousin in 2008, it was a stupendous moment in time for me. To be back in the place where my grandfather was born and had lived with his parents and siblings was wonderful. He had talked a great deal about Upper Clatford so I felt as if I knew it a little. It seemed very like he said but he would have probably noted great changes which were, of course, not apparent to me. When we were in the graveyard at the Church, I chanced to look up at the sky because one of the shared times that I had with my grandfather was looking up at the clouds as he would say that this cloud or that cloud will travel across the Ocean and be over Upper Clatford in a few days. I was young and it was all mysterious to me but I can see now that he missed his home village as he grew older and older. But as he often said so many were gone now of his siblings and of course his parents and so many of his aunts, uncles and cousins. A number had died in the war (WWII) and a number had died of old age. But there I was in the churchyard looking at the various tombstones, I did find one for Henry Blake one of my great grandfather's brothers but my great grandparents were buried at Goodworth Clatford. It was a beautiful quiet place. The Church itself was said to be built during the reign of Henry I (1100-1135). It was rebuilt in the 16th century and to me had a unique layout with the Chancel not visible to the entire seating as one can see that the Church is some what staggered in design.
It was quite fascinating being in this village of my Blake family from the mid 1700s on and then in Andover where they lived back into the 1500s and then Knights Enham in the 1400s-1500s. Their location in the 1300s is within the Manor of Andover and perhaps Enham but I am not positive of that.
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