Ancestors' former home in the Lake District

I'm just about dropping on my feet, after spending hours and hours every day researching ancestors. Compare this to the houses I put a few blogs back! I couldn't have been more wrong!

Ralph Dodds, the great grandfather I mentioned then is descended from the Mounsey family, who owned this estate, Patterdale Hall. It doesn't look as though they were too poor, does it!

Some of the original occupiers immigrated to NSW and took up land grants here, establishing farming properties, with convicts for servants. Some of them are buried in towns - Singleton and Murrurundi - where I haved lived, totally unaware of my ancestral ghosts wafting about there! My next project is a trip to the cemeteries to take some photos.

Some illustrious in-laws found on Ancestry.com...

(Albert Cherbury) David Rivett was the brother-in-law 
of my father's first cousin, Lorna.

He married Stella, daughter of Alfred Deakin, 

Australia's second Prime Minister (above). 

This portrait of the PM is in our National Gallery.

Dr Christina was one of his sisters.

Rohan Rivett was a son of David 
and a playmate of THE Rupert Murdoch.

In Melbourne, the city where Gaelic football was turned into a religion, Rohan Deakin Rivett was the bluest of the blue bloods. Born in 1917, the grandson of Australia's second prime minister, the son of of the founder of the CSIRO and the builder of Australia’s first atomic bomb was given the middle name Deakin at his christening.

His father was Sir Albert Cherbury David Rivett and his mother Stella Deakin, daughter of Alfred Deakin, who followed Edmund Barton. It was inevitable that the Rivetts and Murdochs would socialise.

Rohan was 14 when Rupert was born. His three sisters played with him and coddled him and dressed him when he was little. Rohan Rivett introduced Rupert to more boyish games and tennis and swimming. Elisabeth Murdoch described Rohan as "the brother that Rupert never had."

This reminds me that when we used to visit Auntie Lorna, she would pretend to want to adopt me, as she had only two sons. Because they were wealthy and lived in a huge mansion, I wanted her to!!!!
I googled the house at 148 Edinburgh Road, Castlecrag and it is still there! I remember a huge fishpond surrounded by colannades. The architect mentioned in this article (below) was the very famous Walter Burley Griffin.

Rivett House: 148 Edinburgh Road 1928
Built for Dr E.W. Rivett on the opposite corner to his hospital, the house was the subject of a court case between Griffin’s development company and Rivett (Rivett won) over the building’s design which was completed contrary to the covenant and the original plans submitted to and approved by Griffin. Its interior walls were rendered brick instead of stone and the flat roof of the original design was scrapped for a pitched roof with Marseilles tiles. The rest of the house including its original layout which had been created by Griffin remained unchanged.

Picking mandarins

Well, she won't get run over by a bus in that outfit, I hear you say! Last Monday, Queen's Birthday holiday for us, we went to a local orchard we had seen advertised, to pick mandarins. So did at least 236,421 other carloads of people, which meant the first few hours were spent in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam. We eventually managed to get into an orchard and it was fun picking bucketsful of fruit. One week on, we are all a slight mandarin colour.

Have been very busy practising the piano and tracking down ancestors these past weeks, and am very pleased with success in the latter department. I am concentrating on my paternal grandmother's siblings, and have found a great uncle - son of her youngest sister - his daughter, granddaughter and grandchildren. They are spread from Hawaii to NZ, and used to live in Alaska. I have also come across relatives from further back, one in Scotland and the other in an as yet unnamed foreign place but with a daughter living in Sydney.

I need to work out a way of organising all the papers I've printed from Ancestry.com, and get the hundreds of ancestors into some form I can handle.

I sent off a sample to have my DNA tested. So far, almost all ancestors are from England. What I'm hoping is that there will be some evidence of my Jewish grandfather, whose ancestors came from Poland (that's if I've got the right bloke).

I am not exaggerating when I say I find playing the piano EXTREMELY difficult, so am doing an online uni course on improving my ability to learn. Hope it works!

Interesting what you say about British and American Englishes, Winifred. I'm not surprised they are difficult to understand. When I went to Scotland I could barely understand a word, and had to keep on asking the locals to repeat what they'd just said. One thing I notice about listening to the BBC every night is that almost all the announcers speak very, very fast and I have great difficulty understanding them.