It occurred to me that those coming after us will know little of our lives, still less of our parents' lives, and even less of our grandparents' lives. We know only a little of our grandparents' lives, and nothing of our great grandparents. And, generally, it is only later in life that people begin to be interested in their family background, by which time older relatives may well have died - we only have one member of our parents' generation alive now.
So I thought I would document what I can, in case it is of interest to our children later on, or to our grandchildren (of whom we now have one - Lucy's and Hamish's son), or to other relatives. I started this late in 2002, and after a long gap have finally returned to put it into this format (which I hope is better) and to add some more info, that still remains in my ailing grey cells.
Some of the information is from my own memory, some from things I remember being told by my parents or other relatives, and some from relatives still living. I have tried to acknowledge the latter in this manner. Memories may vary, so I hope that differences between my memory and those of relatives will not lead to family strife!
I have already found structure a bit of a problem, information belonging in more than one place. So you might find duplications, but I hope that this will make each page as far as possible complete in itself.
If you have information, photos etc to contribute, please do let me have them.
So who are we?
I am Ashley Allerton, and my wife is called Debbie (née Stew) and at the time of writing (May 2011) we have lived for nearly 21 years in Exeter, in the south-west of England.
I think that is all you need for now - you should learn more of us and our lives in the course of reading this document.