The area

This site concerns two sets of families, both established local family networks, and both clearly West Country. So when we collect our family stories and explore the geography and social history that lies behind them it has an aspect of a constant compare and contrast exercise.

The Andrew and related families have been based in an area of North Devon, between the moors of Dartmoor and Exmoor, though more to the latter where some of the families would identify as people of the Moor. To the west the area meets the sea at Barnstaple, Bude and the harbour at Hartland, where many left for America, Canada and Australia in the emigrations of the nineteenth century, and more locally to South Wales. To the East the area runs to the Quantocks and Taunton. In the middle of the area lies South Molton, a central town to the area and some of the related families.

The Hawkings and related families come from a parallel area between the Quantocks , the Mendips and the Polden Hills, particularly the area sometimes called the Vale of Avalon, with its coast at Burnham and Berrow, and inland the isolated hills of Glastonbury and Brent Knoll, the later providing an important sanctuary in the middle of the marshes for many of the related families.

Geographicaly therefore in many ways parallel areas, but very different in many others.

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