Meet the Ancestors Episode 11

  • 13 hours ago
Meet the Ancestors Episode 11
Transcript
00:00♪♪
00:10♪♪
00:20♪♪
00:30When a farmer decided to investigate a strange mound
00:33in one of his fields,
00:35little did he realise where his curiosity would lead.
00:38♪♪
00:42The tale that unfolded reunited an unsuspecting family
00:46with the burial ground of their ancestors.
00:49♪♪
01:01It's mid-June, and I'm in Cheshire,
01:04border country between England and Wales,
01:06and on my way to visit that same field,
01:08the site of an ancient chapel.
01:10And the thing that intrigues me is that the chapel's not
01:13in the middle of the village where I expect it.
01:15It's right out in open farmland.
01:17So who'd build a chapel somewhere as remote as this?
01:20And who'd be buried here?
01:24By the time that I reached the site,
01:26the team of archaeologists had exposed the foundations
01:29of what appeared to be quite a large building.
01:34Mike Emery, the excavation director,
01:37told me what they'd discovered so far.
01:39How old is it, then?
01:40The earliest reference we have to it is in 1233,
01:43but we strongly suspect that it actually goes back
01:45to the late 12th century, maybe about 1180, 1190.
01:48And who built it in the first place?
01:50Um, the Cistercian monks who founded an abbey here in 1158.
01:55I mean, this seems an incredibly remote place.
01:58I mean, why did the monks come here to build?
02:00Cistercians loved wild places.
02:03Part of their religious ethic, if you like,
02:05was to make fruitful that which is barren.
02:08Although the chapel was first built by monks,
02:11there's no evidence that they were ever buried here.
02:14And by about 1500, the chapel and its land
02:17had passed to the Manleys,
02:19a wealthy family of French descent.
02:21The Manleys enlarged the chapel,
02:23adding a tower and a chancel.
02:25But if they worshipped here,
02:27then perhaps this is also where they were laid to rest.
02:34Most of the digging is going on inside the chapel,
02:37and some burials have started to turn up in the chancel.
02:40This is the place where the most important people
02:43would have been buried, perhaps even the Manleys themselves.
02:46Unfortunately, this first one's in fairly terrible condition.
02:49There's half of the skeleton missing,
02:51and we're not really going to be able to tell
02:53very much more about the person.
02:55But there is something else.
02:57This skeleton has had a very lucky escape.
03:00And I'm quite, frankly, quite amazed
03:02because it's so close to the surface.
03:04A couple more inches on the top of it,
03:06this skeleton would have been totally destroyed.
03:09It looked like the skull that Frere Evans had found
03:12was complete enough to enable us to rebuild the face.
03:15The entire nasal bone is there. That's fantastic.
03:18The nose is such a distinctive part of somebody's face.
03:21And if that's gone,
03:23it's very difficult to reconstruct somebody reliably.
03:29I gained a better view of the chapel and its surroundings
03:32in the company of Jane Brain, our series illustrator.
03:35Jane will be using clues from the site
03:37to reconstruct the chapel in its heyday,
03:39when it belonged to the Manleys.
03:42From above, we could see the whole ground plan of the chapel,
03:46the foundations of the tower, the nave,
03:49and closest to me, the chancel.
03:52It's going to make a nice little thing, isn't it?
03:54It'll make a very nice reconstruction diorama.
03:57Put it over here.
04:00In the chancel, right in front of where the altar would have been,
04:04lay the burial that we were so interested in.
04:07This was someone very important.
04:09I'm scared to cut it.
04:11By the time I returned to earth,
04:13the skeleton was almost completely exposed.
04:16From the size and thickness of the bones, it looked like a man's.
04:20But there was one other thing that Freya wanted to show me.
04:23We found a couple of pieces of very readily dateable tile
04:27in the grey film.
04:29There's one there just sticking out of the section.
04:32Oh, right. You can see the decoration on that.
04:34And what date is it?
04:36That's cheating. You can't ask me a question like that.
04:39I mean, 1500s-ish.
04:42As the grave can't be older than this tile,
04:45it must have been dug in the 1500s or a little later.
04:49Hopefully, the bones will give us a more precise radiocarbon date.
04:58It was time to remove the bones.
05:00Quite a few teeth missing. I mean, have they fallen out?
05:03Did he lose those before he died?
05:05Certainly he's lost some before he died.
05:07You can see some towards the back of his jaw
05:09where the bone's totally healed over.
05:11OK. Yep.
05:13The box is down there.
05:15OK. Let's have a look. Have you got it?
05:17Yeah, let's put it over that way.
05:19OK.
05:21OK. I think I'm just going to have to lay it in.
05:24Just put the bag down and we'll...
05:26The skull was in great condition.
05:28But as we excavated the rest of the area,
05:30it became clear that this man had led an eventful life.
05:33That's not a normal ankle, is it?
05:35No. And that round there.
05:37That is fused there, I think. Yeah.
05:39Yeah. Flipping hell.
05:41They should be separate, shouldn't they? Yeah, yeah.
05:44But if his left ankle showed signs of some dreadful injury,
05:47then his left leg was much worse.
05:52All right?
05:55All right?
06:00Oh, dear.
06:02Well, there's no mistaking which one's left and right, is there?
06:05No. That's the left one, and that's well and truly broken.
06:14Sure.
06:16The bones would soon start to tell their own story.
06:18But I wanted to find out more about the chapel and its owners,
06:21the Manleys.
06:23So I went to the Cheshire Record Office
06:25in the company of retired music teacher Joyce Cook.
06:29Joyce has a passion for local history.
06:33Well, Mike's already started the excavation,
06:35but I understand you've been doing a bit of digging around in here yourself.
06:38Yes, I've been trying to dig out a bit more information
06:41about the chapel at Poulton.
06:44Joyce showed me the proof that the building was a chapel.
06:48It lay in a tiny drawing on a 17th-century map.
06:52But what really fascinates Joyce is people.
06:56We have a book here called The Cheshire Sheaf,
07:00which tells us about the Manley family who moved to Poulton,
07:06and this tells us how, in 1520,
07:09a Nicholas Manley made his will, and he said,
07:13''My body to be buried in the chapel of Poulton, in the chancel,
07:17''and after my death and my wife's,
07:20''a priest shall be found to sing there for my soul.''
07:24So this Nicholas Manley must have been quite a wealthy man.
07:27Yes, he was quite a prominent person in Poulton,
07:30so I determined that I'd find out more about him.
07:33Have you done?
07:35Well, it took many, many hours of searching,
07:38looking through all kinds of old documents,
07:41and my most exciting find was this wonderful pedigree book
07:45of Cheshire families, written in 1666.
07:49What's the crest?
07:51Well, that's the Manley crest, a hand, a black hand.
07:56Where's our Sir Nicholas, then?
07:58In the middle of the tree,
08:01we have Nicholas Manley, who wished to be married at Poulton Abbey.
08:05So that's the same one? This is the same Nicholas, yes.
08:08Can you see his name there? Yes.
08:10And his son, Henry Manley, also of Poulton,
08:13and his son, John Manley, and his son, Henry Manley.
08:16Oh, right. Is that Henry Manley sold...?
08:19Son and heir sold Poulton to Richard Grosvenor of Eton.
08:25Although Henry sold the estate in about 1600,
08:28some of Sir Nicholas Manley's descendants
08:31stayed in the area for at least another 50 years.
08:34What I want to know is, what happened to them?
08:37I'd love to know, too.
08:39But, of course, when you do genealogy, that's my particular hobby,
08:44you are supposed to work from the known to the unknown and work backwards.
08:48But here I've got to work forwards
08:50and see if I can find the descendants of some of the people on this tree.
08:55So do you think you can do it?
08:57Well, I'll do my best.
08:59It's a challenge, and they're all hiding around
09:02in some of the little villages, no doubt.
09:05I'll see what I can find.
09:07While Joyce started her search, I went off to Bradford University
09:11to see what bone specialist Charlotte Roberts could tell me.
09:14I take it that it is a man, isn't it?
09:17We were pretty confident just on the basis of the size.
09:20Yes, the size of the bones. Very robust bones.
09:23Very chunky male and tall.
09:25He's about six foot three.
09:27Six foot three?
09:29Yeah, huge.
09:31Certainly for a period in time.
09:33I realised that he was actually quite tall
09:35when we saw the skeleton of the ground,
09:37but I never thought he'd be that big. Six foot three?
09:39Can you tell how old he was?
09:41We've got some wear on the teeth here, on the upper jaw.
09:45You see the yellow dentings showing through.
09:47That suggests he may be old,
09:49but that's very much dependent on the sort of diet you eat.
09:52If it's very coarse, your teeth will wear down much faster than normal.
09:55But if we look at the pelvis,
09:58there's a joint at the front of the pelvis
10:00that we look at for degenerative change.
10:03Now, normally, this is like a ridge and furrow pattern,
10:07and as you get older, it changes to this appearance.
10:10What, so they're just more knobbly?
10:12Yes, much, much flatter.
10:14And on the basis of these changes,
10:17this person is probably around 55, 60.
10:21So he is getting on in years.
10:23And there are other things in the skeleton which are rather interesting
10:26because the first obvious thing that we see is in the neck vertebrae,
10:31and you've got the second and third, which are totally fused.
10:34See?
10:37Does that mean he'd have had a stiff neck?
10:39I think it might mean a stiff neck.
10:41It might be trauma in the neck area.
10:43What, some injury?
10:45Yeah, because if you get joint disease, like osteoarthritis,
10:49you sometimes get underlying trauma, which damages the joint,
10:53and therefore the stresses have changed through the joint
10:56and you get this formation of bone infusion eventually.
10:59So is that the body trying to compensate?
11:01That's right, yeah.
11:03I think the one thing that we really noticed
11:05about this skeleton in the ground was his left leg.
11:08I mean, it looked as if he'd had some severe problems.
11:11I mean, what exactly's happened?
11:13Well, I think you were right to notice he had severe problems.
11:16He's got a fracture and it's very long-standing
11:20because it's healed nicely.
11:22It's a very smooth bone.
11:24But if you turn over the bone, you'll see something else going on.
11:28That rather odd hole. Yeah, yeah.
11:30What is that?
11:32I think what's happened is an infection has got inside the bone.
11:36The pus inside builds up
11:39and then pushes its way out through a hole to drain it.
11:43So there would have been quite a lot of soft tissue inflammation
11:46in this leg as well.
11:48And that's all to do with this break, you think, is it?
11:50All to do with the break, yes.
11:52On the X-ray, which I've had taken, you can see that hole.
11:55Yeah. Yeah.
11:57We've got very little overlap, very little shortening.
12:01We've got no major deformity.
12:03So the... It's not bent, then?
12:05It's not bent, no.
12:07And so it's a good result.
12:09I think an orthopaedic surgeon would be very happy with that.
12:12Really? What, a modern one? Yes, I think he would. Yeah.
12:15What's the impression that you get of the person
12:17from what you've been able to find out today?
12:19Generally speaking, I don't think he would have been
12:22too incapacitated with these injuries.
12:24And I think a lot of it's to do with the fact
12:26that he probably had this fracture treated.
12:29So, pretty healthy-looking person, actually,
12:33but suffered a few traumatic incidents in his life.
12:40He seemed a fascinating character, but what did he look like?
12:44To find out, I took his skull to facial reconstruction expert
12:48Richard Neve at Manchester University.
12:51It's a nice big brow.
12:53Nice big nose.
12:55Is it a wide nose?
12:57I know there's a lot of the nasal bone surviving, isn't there?
13:00Yeah, that's not going to be particularly wide.
13:03It is going to be a fairly hefty sort of nose, though.
13:07Not a hooked nose, but sort of slightly rounded.
13:10So is that actually quite a prominent chin?
13:13It's a fairly prominent chin, yes.
13:15But he's got...
13:17He'll have rather thin lips.
13:19So he's going to have a fairly biggish sort of nose
13:22and a fairly prominent sort of chin
13:24and a bit sort of sunken back in this area,
13:26which will give him rather thinner lips.
13:29I shall enjoy doing this one.
13:33While Richard started on the face,
13:35I went down to Somerset to see Jane Brayne.
13:38She'd visited some of the surviving churches and villages around the chapel,
13:42but the best clue came from that tiny drawing of the chapel
13:45from the 17th-century map.
13:47So what happens when you put all this together?
13:50Well, this is what I've arrived at so far.
13:55So, a fairly squat tower
13:58with these two sets of windows here,
14:02buttress at the end.
14:04What about the roof?
14:06Well, there's quite a lot of evidence on site for roofing materials.
14:09There are slates and there are also tiles.
14:12I think the largest quantity of roofing material was a pinkish tile,
14:16an unglazed pinkish tile.
14:18So that's what we're going to go for.
14:20It's all going to look very colourful, isn't it?
14:22Because you're going to have this lovely warm stone
14:24and then the pink tiles on the roof and this centre bit whitewashed.
14:28Yes, it's going to be a lovely thing to paint.
14:32It's back to Joyce's. I've just had a really excited phone call from her
14:35and it looks as if she's started to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
14:41Have you actually managed to find a direct line from Sir Nicholas,
14:46if that's who it is, to the present day?
14:49Well, I didn't think I'd be able to say yes,
14:52but the answer is definitely yes.
14:55I began to wonder what had happened to all the rich Manleys
14:59because there were so many of them who were knights
15:01and lived in big halls.
15:03So I thought, oh, it's time I had a look in De Brett's Peerage
15:07and Landed Drentry and books like that.
15:11And I was very excited to find some Manleys,
15:13not in Cheshire, but living in Staffordshire.
15:17So I roughed out a tree.
15:19It's rather long, with four Manley brothers at the top,
15:26Francis, Richard, Roger and John.
15:29And then I realised that the Michael Manley down at the bottom there
15:34was a direct descendant of this John Manley.
15:38So basically what you're saying is that this joins on...
15:42This joins on to this tree.
15:45That's the same John.
15:46It's rather annoying that the old trees don't have any dates on them.
15:49No.
15:50You see, you're guessing at it all, but he's definitely that John.
15:54Did you ever think you'd be able to do that?
15:56No, no, no.
16:00Astonishingly, Joyce managed to trace the Manley family tree
16:03from Sir Nicholas of Poulton in 1520 right down to his direct descendant today.
16:08We even knew his name, Michael Roger Manley.
16:11But the address we had was from 1952 and, not surprisingly, he'd moved.
16:16So there's only one thing left to do.
16:19Call up every M. R. Manley in the phone book
16:22and hope that he's one of the five listed.
16:25Hello.
16:26Hello. My name's Julian Richards from the BBC.
16:29Slightly odd request.
16:31I'm trying to track down a family called the Manleys
16:35and particularly a Michael Roger Manley.
16:38And I notice in the telephone book you're listed under M. R. Manley.
16:41Yeah, that's right. Yeah, but we're not Michael Roger here yet.
16:44It's not Michael Roger.
16:46Oh, dear.
16:47Well, I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm just going to have to phone everybody up
16:50and you were the first.
16:52OK, thank you.
16:53OK, thank you.
16:54Bye.
17:01Hello.
17:02Hello.
17:03Hello.
17:04Mrs Manley?
17:05Yes.
17:06Hello, my name's Julian Richards from the BBC.
17:09This may seem a rather odd request,
17:11but basically I'm trying to track down some members of a family
17:15who lived in Cheshire in the 16th century
17:18and I'm looking for an M. R. Manley,
17:21particularly a Michael Roger Manley.
17:23And in the telephone book you're down under M. R. Manley.
17:28That's right. That's my husband's initials.
17:30And is he Michael Roger?
17:32Michael Roger.
17:33He is?
17:34Yes.
17:35And he's got a son called Bridget.
17:37Yes.
17:38I think I might be going somewhere here.
17:41And was he born in 1938?
17:44Yeah, yes, he was.
17:46I think I might have found the people I want.
17:49Well, what's the matter? Just a phone.
17:51Well, I'm working on a programme called Meet the Ancestors.
17:53I couldn't wait to meet them.
17:55But by the time I got there, Michael had been rummaging in the attic
17:58and now it was my turn for a surprise.
18:00Well, as a matter of fact, I have found something from the attic
18:04that I thought was probably rather irrelevant at the time.
18:07Is it wallpaper?
18:08Yes, it's a bit of wallpaper, though.
18:10It's not quite it.
18:11And this rather large scroll.
18:20This was in your attic?
18:22Yes, yes, yes.
18:25Well, it's the right family, obviously, isn't it?
18:27Because the black hand crests there.
18:29And look, John Manley of Poulton Hall.
18:33Well, Nicholas Manley of Poulton.
18:36Perhaps that's the person whose will we've found.
18:38Maybe, yeah.
18:41Oh, this is brilliant.
18:42I mean, this is the conclusive proof, isn't it?
18:45I mean, if you've got...
18:46I mean, it can't just be a coincidence
18:48that you've managed to find this in the attic.
18:50So it was actually produced in 1658.
18:54It starts at 1167.
18:561167!
18:58Lived in the time of King Henry II in 1157 and had issue.
19:02Well, that's a good job, cos if he hadn't had issue...
19:04Oh, yes.
19:05..then there would have been no...
19:07No, that would have been the end of the Manleys.
19:10So there's 500 years of the Manley family history here.
19:15Yes, there is.
19:16And you didn't know that you had this in the attic?
19:18No, I had no clue, no.
19:20Absolutely no idea at all.
19:23MUSIC CONTINUES
19:27Their curiosity aroused.
19:29Michael, his wife Sally Anne and their son Mark
19:32journeyed from Hampshire to the chapel at Poulton.
19:36We went straight to the graveside.
19:38How do you feel about the idea that, you know,
19:41here you may be somewhere really ancestral to you?
19:44Truly unbelievable, really.
19:46It's just...
19:47And you didn't know about this place at all?
19:49Oh, absolutely not, no. No.
19:51None at all, no. Absolutely no idea.
19:53Of course, the thing is, even if it isn't Sir Nicholas Manley,
19:56there's a distinct possibility that it's a member of the Manley family,
20:00simply because many of them are probably buried in the chancel.
20:03Can you tell if he's a big man? Yeah.
20:05I mean, not only is he tall, but he's obviously very well built.
20:09You know, big muscles, obviously quite a powerful, impressive...
20:12Well, it must be related.
20:14Oh, obviously, I mean, obviously he is a Manley, obviously.
20:17Built like a gorilla.
20:19I mean, do you think that there are actually any characteristics
20:22in the Manley family, obviously knowing your relatives from the past?
20:26Big hands. Your father had big hands, you've got big hands.
20:29Yes. I mean, they're just monster things, these things.
20:32Let's have a look at your hands, yeah.
20:34Oh, yes, hang on, yes, when you compare them to mine, yeah, I'm...
20:38Sandwiched in there. Yes.
20:40I agree, yes, I would say...
20:42I'd definitely have to go and have another look
20:44and see if this chap's got enormous hands.
20:47I'm not sure whether you can expect...
20:52This is all starting to fit together.
20:54We found a family called the Manleys, of French origin.
20:57Their crest is a black hand,
20:59and it turns out that all the modern Manley men
21:01seem to have great big hands.
21:03And what's the French word for hand?
21:06Man.
21:11Meanwhile, in Richard Neve's house,
21:14Meanwhile, in Richard Neve's studio in Manchester,
21:17the man's face was gradually taking shape.
21:20Now...
21:31This is when it ceases to be a skull, if you like,
21:35and starts to become, recognisably, a face.
21:44That's rather nice, that.
21:47Quite like that.
21:55Yes.
21:56So what started off as what appeared to be
22:00an extremely wide and possibly rather huge nose
22:04is now really perfectly, perfectly normal and quite modest.
22:09That's nice.
22:15As all the evidence suggests that our man
22:17was buried in the 16th century,
22:19we gave him a hairstyle of that period.
22:21But just as Richard finished the head,
22:23I had a call from Paul Pettit
22:25at the Oxford Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory.
22:27I don't know, he was not bad.
22:32Paul had dated a small fragment of his skull
22:36Paul had dated a small fragment of our man's leg bone.
22:41And, from the tone of his voice,
22:43I suspected the results were not what I was hoping for.
22:47The age of the sample is 245 radiocarbon years BP,
22:53but we have to turn that, of course, into a calendrical age,
22:57so we essentially plot it against our curve here.
23:02This is the result in radiocarbon years,
23:04and we read it off and we get this somewhat confusing age range.
23:09But there are three peaks there.
23:11There are.
23:12I think there's something nasty going on in the atmosphere at this time.
23:15We can probably ignore that.
23:17The two of concern to us are here,
23:20which range from about 1510 and 1680 AD.
23:26But, as you can see,
23:28this peak is considerably higher than this one here.
23:33Indicating, really, that it's most probable
23:36that the death of this individual occurred
23:38somewhere in the middle decades of the 17th century AD.
23:43The 17th century?
23:4517th century.
23:46Although there's something of a chance that it could have died in the 16th.
23:50So, overall, while we should say, really,
23:53that the individual died somewhere between about 1510 and 1680 AD,
24:00if we're going to bet on it, we should really say the 17th century.
24:06After spending so long investigating long-dead manlies,
24:10the opportunity to meet some real live ones
24:12was not something that Joyce wanted to miss.
24:15So when I took the completed head down to Hampshire,
24:18she came along too.
24:20What would Michael and his family make of our man?
24:23Now, this is the person from the chapel.
24:28Oh, my goodness.
24:29Amazing.
24:30It is.
24:31Amazing.
24:33Gosh, look at that.
24:36Our old ancestors.
24:38Well, this is the big question, you see, isn't it, really?
24:41Yes.
24:42Because, I mean, we know quite a lot about that person.
24:45I mean, we know that he was tall and he was strongly built
24:48and, also, he lived to quite a ripe old age.
24:51And the hints are there that he was somebody very wealthy.
24:54I mean, not just from where he was buried as well,
24:57because, I mean, he'd had that terrible broken leg,
25:00which had obviously received fairly good medical attention.
25:03You know, it hadn't been a problem to him later on in his life.
25:06So, I mean, we're assuming that he is somebody very wealthy,
25:09although we can't be 100% certain that he is one of your ancestors.
25:14Yeah, I think there's a slight resemblance in the nose
25:17and possibly the chin.
25:19Well, I think the noses are very similar.
25:22Do you think so?
25:23And I thought the chins were.
25:25Do you think the chin?
25:26Yes.
25:27Absolutely.
25:30If we could see the reconstruction against it.
25:34Now, to me, they look remarkably similar.
25:37Turn that way, Michael, please.
25:39Look at the shape of the nose and the chin.
25:42I agree with the chin.
25:44And the way the forehead slopes backwards.
25:47If you stood here and looked at them both, what do you think?
25:52I don't know.
25:55I'm not as convinced as you are.
25:57Aren't you?
25:58No.
25:59Well, we should probably never know.
26:01Maybe that's because I saw the chap's skull, you see.
26:03Maybe, maybe.
26:06We had a small fragment of one of his bones radiocarbon dated,
26:10and what it's come out as is quite a wide range.
26:14I mean, he could have been buried any time between about 1520 and 1680.
26:19So, I mean, how does that fit in with the nose?
26:21Well, that would fit in because Sir Nicholas was buried in 1520,
26:26but even if the skeleton was not his,
26:29there were other Manleys living around there.
26:32The last I found in the registers was 1639.
26:36So, there were still Manleys living in that area well into the 17th century?
26:41Yes.
26:42And they were probably being buried in the chapel then,
26:44right up until the middle of the 17th century?
26:46Yes, probably, when the chapel decayed, sadly.
26:49We know that he's somebody fairly tall and imposing,
26:52but, I mean, are you happy to accept him as a member of the Manley family?
26:55I think he's a pretty good-looking fellow.
26:57I think he's probably been accepted into the family, hasn't he?
27:00I think so.
27:01There was one more surprise, though,
27:03Jane's reconstruction of the chapel
27:05where their ancestors had worshipped and were buried.
27:12Poulton Chapel, lost for centuries under a grassy field,
27:16has shared with us some of its secrets.
27:20Not those of the monks that first built it over 800 years ago,
27:24but of the Manleys, the wealthy family
27:26that restored and enlarged it to their own glory.
27:30Whoever our man was, the search for his identity
27:33has led to a 20th-century family rediscovering their lost ancestry.
27:38The bones are actually going to be reburied in a Cistercian monastery,
27:41but we must never lose sight of the fact
27:43that they're more than just bones.
27:45They were once a person and a person with feelings.
27:48When Sir Nicholas died,
27:49he asked that the priest would sing for his soul and that of his wife.
27:53And so here, for one last time today, the priest is going to sing for them.
27:58Atte clamamus exules fili heve
28:04Atte suspiramus gementes et flentes
28:10In hac lacrimalum vale
28:14O clemens
28:19O pia
28:24O dulcis virgo Maria
28:42Famous faces digging into the roots of their family tree
28:45to unravel hidden secrets, lost connections and surprising discoveries,
28:49revealing stories of courage, joy and sacrifice.
28:53Who do you think you are?
28:54Watch the new series and past episodes on BBC iPlayer.