Who Do They Think They Are?*

Perhaps only British readers will be interested in this one. Let’s see. We’re going to visit Masham, our neighbouring market town: population – just over 1000. Main employers: two breweries – Black Sheep and Theakstons. It’s an attractive place, much loved as a stopping off place and watering-hole by visitors to the Yorkshire Dales. But it’s nobody’s idea of the beating heart of the country, or even the county.

What I’ve only just found out is this. Boris Johnson, one of our (several) recent Prime Ministers (2019-2022), and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party from 2015 – 2020 both had antecedents in Masham. No love was lost between the two politicians as they faced each other across the despatch box. Yet once upon a time – about 170 years ago, when Queen Victoria was on the throne – their ancestors were neighbours up here in Yorkshire.

This is the Market Square on the best weekend of the year. The annual Sheep Fair.

A saddler called Mr. Stott lived in the Market Square. He was twice married and fathered 7 children, so you might think this makes him Boris Johnson’s forbear. No, he’s Jeremy Corbyn’s ancestor. His neighbour was a confectioner, a widow, a Mrs. Raper. And her sister-in-law was Miss Raper, who married the Prime Minister’s great-great-great grandfather Thomas John Johnson.

The smallest house on the Market Square. And it’s not the family seat of either the Johnson or the Corbyn family.

Both families had probably lived here for generations. Mr. Stott and Mrs Raper were certainly neighbours from before the census of 1851, and still lived next to each other when Mr Stott’s second wife Sarah died in 1871.

And both were buried in Masham Churchyard, though I haven’t yet spotted their graves.

*This is a reference to the BBC documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? which traces the family history of people in the public eye.

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

47 thoughts on “Who Do They Think They Are?*”

  4. There’s me thinking Masham was all about sheep. Who’d ‘a thought it!

    (No idea whether the phrase is true Yorkshire but it feels like it might once have been.)

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  6. They say it’s a small world – probably a lot smaller than you expect. When I moved to this house 30 years ago, I discovered my next-door-neighbour was an ‘almost’ next-door neighbour to where I grew up, 200 miles away. And ten years before that, I was walking through a farm and got talking to the farmer whose family had owned the land my grandmother’s house was built on, and who were still next-door neighbours when I left home. Again, 250 miles from home.

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  7. Fascinating! We’ll be in Masham next month, on our way home from our annual Grinton family reunion. It’s a favourite coffee stop of ours but I would never have connected it to those two!

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      1. Yes, Johnny Bagdad’s 🙂 But actually this time we’re staying the night (at the Bay Horse). However it’s right in the middle of the month so bound to clash with your house-sitting 😦 Next year maybe …!

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  9. Those kinds of television shows are the best use of the medium, story telling. I was thinking of a television show from my youth the other day, it was the ‘Eyes of Texas’ by Ray Miller. Miller found the most interesting places to tell the story. I recall many a Saturday evening watching the show and wanting to visit those places. I suppose that might have been a little fuel for the storytelling fire. Thank you for sharing this, keep making your days count.

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  13. Interesting and … weird. I don’t know that much about Mr Corbyn but even in Germany we couldn’t escape the antics of Mr Johnson. I wonder if the inhabitants of Masham are proud of their connections with either man or if they are wondering whether their beer is all that wholesome? Mind you, about 50km to the west of here is a town of similar size, not with breweries but with vineyards, where more than 100 years ago a native left for America. His descendant is nobody to be proud of either. I don’t even want to write his name lest he appears. I’m talking with a man who needs plastic surgery on his one earlobe pretty soon.

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