There is currently a project underway to restore the bells in St. Christopher’s Church in Willingale Village, which have not been rung since the end of World War 2.
You can keep up to date of their progress by looking at the website http://www.willingalebells.org/
As we haven’t blogged for a while I thought I’d do a quick update on the latest research.
Our main work over the last few months has been to review the censuses and fill in those census details missing from the family tree. This has helped us add a few more locations and occupations into the family tree. We have now recorded over 3,500 distinct locations of which over 3,300 have been geo-coded in the website database, these geo-coded locations are the ones which appear in the maps when viewing a person’s history in the online family tree.
We have also just restarted adding documents and photos into the Willingale archive on the website. We still have over 300 items to sort through. A lot of the remaining items relate to people we can’t positively identify in the tree or are duplicates of existing items, meaning we are taking a bit longer to double check items before they get uploaded.
We have also had a major find of interesting items relating to Thomas Willingale, the Lopper, and these will be written up in the next few journals.
After a 4 month wait due to our DNA testing company ceasing trading, we now have Martin’s DNA results back.
Martin’s DNA matches the ‘Willingale’ DNA profile and provides confirmation that the ‘Thomas’ branch of the family is related to the ‘John’, ‘William’ and ‘Samuel’ branches.
The latest results can be seen here, WFS members can see the full analysis here.
The latest edition of the Lopping Times, the society’s twice yearly journal has now been sent out to all members.
It’s been almost a year since the website was converted to use WordPress, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to add a few new pages:
Willingale Billhook: The billhook should soon be on display in the new museum due to open next to the Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge in Chingford.
The History of the Willingales: A summary of the early Willingales from our own research.
The Lopping Times: A summary of the articles written up in our twice yearly journal which is sent out to WFS members.
The Two Churches of Willingale Village: A short history of the churches in Willingale Village.
I’ve also added some additional photos to the Willingale Village Gallery
We occasionally get asked about the Willingale Coat of Arms/Family Crest.
Historically, armorial bearings were first used by feudal lords and knights in the mid-12th century on battlefields as a way to identify allied from enemy soldiers, later arms were adopted by other social classes such as the clergy and later still by peasants and commoners.
It’s a common misbelief that families have the right to such a crest or Coat of Arms, however Coats of Arms are actually awarded to individuals and not families, although they can pass through the male line, usually with small amendments to differentiate each owner.
In the UK the College of Arms regulates Coats of Arms and proof of direct descendancy is required for the legal right to bear an ancestor’s coat of arms.
Some years ago I photographed a Willingale Coat of Arms and the most recent enquiry, prompted me to do some digging in an attempt to prove or disprove its authenticity.
We have traced our family tree back to the 1500s but have found no record of anyone using a Coat of Arms. Initially I looked at some German Coats of Arms for names like Winterthur and Villinger as some sources state Willingale is an anglicised version of these. These arms look nothing like the Arms I photographed at Lopping Hall.
I then turned to some of the early spellings of Willingale and found that a commercial ‘History’ of the Willingale name gave a description of the Willingale Coat of Arms but stated ‘The arms depicted here have been quartered with Willing and Gale’ These arms matched the photograph, but the description seems to indicate there has never been a ‘Willingale’ Coat of Arms, and to get round this problem someone decided to merge the Arms of two completely different names to create the ‘Willingale Coat of Arms’. A quick Google confirmed these Arms contained elements of both a Willing and Gale Arms.
I think from this we can conclude the Willingale Crest I photographed has no link to anyone with the Willingale family name.
During our researching we have found some very interesting things, including this snippet, which appeared in The Miami News, along with quite a few other news publications in July 1955
London, July 19 – Ronnie Hill, a 31-yearold clerk jilted by his fiancee, paced endlessly to and fro outside her home today. “I’ll keep walking until she changes her mind,” he declared.
He started his marathon at 10:15 am yesterday – 16 paces one way and16 the other, smoking all the time.
Ronnie said he and Sally, 21, were to marry July 20 but she broke it off last week.
I’ve loved her since she was 14 and I’ll go on walking until 1 drop,” said Ronnie.
Some of the neighbours brought him tea and buns, but Sally wasn’t forthcoming. Her father said she was sick.
“I think he’s being silly,” Mr. Willingale commented. “He ought to learn to take it on the chin.”
Unfortunately we have not been able to identify SallyWillingale in our family tree!
The current proposals to sell off parts of the Nations Forest’s is covered in Radio 4’s The Long View, where they compare events with Epping Forest in the 1860’s. Obviously Thomas Willingale gets a mention. The programme is 30 minutes long and you can listen to it via this link.
We are pleased to announce that another Willingale has agreed to join the DNA Surname Project. Martin is from the ‘Thomas’ branch of the Family and we should have his results back within the next couple of months.
We would still like other Willingales to join the project, especially from the ‘Charles’ branch of the family, where despite testing three individuals, have yet to find a match that links this branch into the main family tree. Our conventional genealogical research seems to indicates ALL Willingales are related, so its disconcerting that we have yet to find a link from this branch.
We have recently completed a review of the ‘early Willingales’ in our main tree and have made several changes to our data. The main Willingale tree now starts with Richard Willingale and Thomasine who were living in Rawreth, Essex in the early 1600s.
We had previously supposed Richard to be the son of Thomas Willingale & Ellan Milborne who married in Great Dunmow in 1563. Thomas & Ellan’s children were all christened at St Mary the Virgin, and since studying the images of the church register, which is available on SEAX, we are now certain that Richard was not one of their children.
As Thomas & Ellen are no longer connected to Richard who is now the starting point for the main tree we have moved them and their known children over to the unconnected tree. This has also made it necessary to move several other early Willingales to the unconnected tree as they too are no longer linked to anyone in the main tree.
We are constantly working to link all Willingales together and hope to eventually have everyone in the main Willingale tree.
You can use this RSS feed to keep up to date as new documents added to the mebers area: 
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You can use this RSS feed to keep up to date with Willingale news items appearing on the web:
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