When I was born on 11th May 1942, there were quite a few Rookard clan living around Brentwood. All of whom were in some way part of the large family grandfather Rookard had sired. As to were he and the family name came from is quite a story. According family historians, The earliest trace for the family name, they have come up with so far, puts a William Rookard living in Norwich sometime in the late sixteenth century.

This would tie up with the 'Huguenot' connection. For in Robin D Gwynns fascinating book. Huguenot Heritage, published 1985 by Routledge & Kegan Paul.(ISBN number 0-7102-0420-5) puts some of the first French speaking refugees in Norwich between 1581 and 1604.

It is however possible that the family may have come over from Holland, for a 1604 survey of Norwich churches show that the city did have a number of Dutch as well as French churches for their local communities who were involved in a number of trades including weaving. One has to remember that the flight of the Huguenots started after the 1551 Edict of Chateaubriant led to the persecution of those French Calvinist Protestants. These fled out of France to the low countries such as Holland where come 1567 , following the first revolt of the Netherlands against Philip 11 of Spain, they found themselves the subject of persecution again. It would seem likely that the Rookard clan would have been among those heading for the safety of England at that time. If not at that time, then with the greatest number, who fled after the 1598 Edict of Nantes.

It would also seem that the Huguenots were a 'good thing' for the economic transformation of England in the years around 1700. For apart from being important in the development of London, Norwich, Southampton and Canterbury. The French and Dutch refugees, with their skills helped develop the Nations Silk, Textile, Paper, Glassware Banking and Insurance industries.

Some of those refugees for example settled in London's Spitalfields building around 9 churches. One of them is still there. No longer Huguenot. For as they moved out it became first a Jewish and now a place of worship for the Asian residents of the area who are Spitalfields latest immigrant population as history yet again repeats itself.

So it would seem that there's more than a chance, that those first Rookards who settled in Norwich came over the North Sea from Holland sometime between the sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, when they were escaping that religious persecution in France. But they were not to stay in Norwich, as they soon spread themselves around the East Anglian area where in Cities like, Ipswich, Cambridge and Colchester and countless small Villages, they set up home and business.

Mostly this was in the Clothing and Textile trades. But other newcomers brought with them the arts of Gold and Silver Smiths, Printing and Weaving. As for the Family Rookard. The branch I come from, settled in the North Essex village of Wendens Ambo which is just outside Saffron Warden, and within walking Distance of the nearest train station, Audley End. Its a name I carry proudly as my second name, (i.e.) Dennis Wenden Rookard.

It is also true to say that the Original Huguenot name underwent a number of changes before it became ROOKARD. I have seen and suffered all kinds of the spelling of the name. Rickard-Rockard-Rickyard-Rookhard-Rochad etc., the list is almost endless. But if I have this problem today, think back to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, when few outside the educated class's could read and write. Then take into account the various strong local accents and it not surprising that most of the names that are found in those old Parish registers and other records are very odd, for even the parish clergymen would often take a wild and woolly guess at it's spelling.

As for my personal history. I am the only child of Stella Allmey, who died October 1989 and Frederick George Rookard who died May 1971, who met and married sometime 1941. My Father was one of seven or so children from the first marriage of my Grandfather George Golden Wenden Rookard, listed as a shunter in London Docks, and Louisa Susan. Strangely his birth certificate issued for his birth on 7th January 1897 by a Mr T Threlford, registrar of Canning Town, West Ham, does not list her sir-name. Listing her only as Louisa Susan Rookard, formerly. So she could have been a cousin or other distant relative. Such things were not unknown then. Indeed it has been said that were it not for the coming of rail transport and the age of cheap travel, Such was the state inbreeding through out the nation, we were in danger of breeding a race of congenital Idiots.

To underline that point. around 1840 if we compare the average yearly wage of a farm worker and the average wage of today, then the cost of transport by stagecoach from Chelmsford to London would for that farm worked have been what for you and I, would be the cost of a trip from London to New York. Small wonder the gene pool was very localized.

What we do know about grandfather is that he originally came from Wendens Ambo a village near Saffron Walden in North Essex. Traveling down to East London to become in the fullness of time a train driver. He could not have been a shunter in the docks for long, for he gained a post with the Great Eastern Railway then building and driving their railway lines out of London into East Anglia. Starting as an engine cleaner, then a fireman, he soon became a locomotive driver, (in working class terms then, a post rather like that of an aircraft pilot today).

It must have been in Canning Town in London, he met Lusisa, and having married, brought his new bride to Brentwood, The a small town, located about 25 miles due East of London. In the late 1880s This town was at the end of the line for the railway company, At that time a hill blocked the way ahead into East Anglia, so for a few years until the company raised the finance to push the line forward into the wilds of East Anglia. But for it's workforce and their families, the Railway company had provided a number of cottages, one of which became the somewhat overcrowded family home. Whilst those houses are now long gone the area is still remembered in the name of that road, Railway Square, now a modern collection of flats and houses.

Here in Brentwood he and his wife had some 11 children, One of which was my father Frederick George Rookard. (Born 1897). Times were hard, for even if grandfather was an engine driver, their was not much money to spare. So it was one less mouth to feed, when Grandfather was asked if he wanted to get rid of the twelve year old Fred, by sending the boy to a Shaftsbury training ship. These like the Shaftsbury homes were set up by the by the Shaftsbury Society which had been set up by that noble Victorian Lord Shaftsbury to help the children of East London's poor. Taking them out of the slums to give them a better start in life.

In fathers case his Shaftsbury ship was an old Naval sailing ship, then nothing more then a hulk moored downriver of Ipswich, opposite Harwich, where he had a hard life being taught for an eventual life at sea, by learning how to sail an old time Naval sailing ship. Mind you by the time he joined the Royal Navy, they had long gone over to the new fangled coal powered engines, so it was not a lot of use. By the time he left the sea however, Oil had replaced coal as a fuel and before he died, atomic reactors were being used.

But back in the early 1900s, father was destined for the Royal Navy, in which he remained throughout the First world war, being involved in the landings of Gallipali and I think the battle of Jutland, before being invalided out of the navy in around 1918-1919. He then joined the Merchant Navy as an able seaman and sailed the world out of the port of London. returning to Brentwood in the late 1930s. meeting and marring my mother, Stella Allmy in 1941, with the result that I was their only child, being born in 1942.

His had been an interesting life, for apart from seeing the revolution of sea transport turning from sail to steam, he had lived through the development of aircraft from those first flights at kittyhawk to the first man to land on the moon. Indeed it was his proud boast that whilst working for the Post Office telephone service laying in telephone lines as part of a gang, he had been invited on board the R100, one of this nations two great airships. When her sister airship the R101 crashed in northern France, the programme and all future development of these craft ended.

In the meantime Grandfathers first wife had died, and he had re-married again, and produced another 6 or 7 children. Of the children, those that survived childhood or died in the wars, married and have settled around the town or within traveling distance. Whilst some have moved overseas.

I know that there is another branch of the ROOKARD'S living in West London but have only met them once back in 1973 when I was working for London Broadcasting and like you, they wrote a letter in about the name. I also know of a branch down under, known as ROCKARD. The romantic thought is that they could have been the ones transported out to Van Demans land for stealing a loaf of bread, or even a bit of poaching around Wendens Ambo...who knows.