During a visit to Liverpool earlier this year, Diana came across this sign. (0611517)

MOST family trees continue to branch for centuries. But this particular Caryl limb dies out with Diana and her older sister, Susan.
‘I’ve always felt it acutely, that our Caryl name will die with us. The genes will still be there of course, but not linked to the family name.’

Caryl is a gaelic title, meaning butcher or hacker, but in French it was connected to pillow-making. In more modern times the name in Diana’s line has been mostly associated with watch-making, jewellery and opticians.

In the last 200 years, the Caryls have migrated south from Liverpool to Monks Coppenhall near Crewe, to Cardiff and, thanks to Diana, across the English Channel to Guernsey.

Yet the genealogical links also extend across oceans – to Canada and New Zealand, stopping off in the North-West Frontier. And they have provided her with a clearer picture of her roots.

‘My father really didn’t talk much about his forebears,’ recalled Diana, who had only a sketchy knowledge of the Caryl background outside her own recent investigations.

‘I didn’t consciously know much about the family and in those days was not especially interested. It was the Caryl side I knew least about.’

The family story starts with John Caryl who married Sarah Shoebridge, (born in Kent in 1788), in Westminster, London in 1809.

They moved north to Warrington and then Liverpool with their family, including a son, John, born 1817, and daughter, Caroline.

Two members of the Caryl family lived in roads near to the aptly named Caryl Street, a route that at the time was several hundred yards long. It lay inland from the Brunswick, Toxteth and Harrington Docks, an area on the edge of the rapidly developing city of Liverpool.

Caryl Street in the 19th century was also the location for two of Liverpool’s main hospitals: the Royal Southern and the City (south).

Both have long been demolished.

Diana, left, with her mother, Joan Mary, and sister, Susan. (0611573)

John Caryl’s son, also John, must have moved from Liverpool to Monks Coppenhall  some time after marrying Elizabeth (nee Fairfield) in 1842 and before their son, George, was born there in 1849.

John was described as ‘a watchmaker living in Monks Coppenhall near Crewe’. Why they moved is unclear, though Monks Coppenhall and Crewe were developing quickly thanks to an expanding railway network and locomotives being built there.

The watch-making Caryls remained in the area for more than half a century until George and his wife, Mary (nee Priest), left for Cardiff between 1888 and 1891 with Mary’s elderly father, Allan, a successful builder.

A press cutting of the time details a presentation to the Caryls on their departure and notes that George had ‘worthily filled the office of Sunday School superintendent’.

He was presented with an illuminated address.

As for his wife, she had ‘felt keenly the parting from her friends and the place of worship she had attended for so long’.

The move was made between 1888 and 1891 and the Caryl children, Lily Mary, Walter Priest and Ethel May, had a new country to grow up in.

Cardiff’s 1891 census records the Caryls living at 23, Clifton Street, Roath.

George was still described a watch-maker and jeweller.

In the 1901 census George’s job continues to be noted as a watch-maker, but his son Walter Priest, (a master optician and Diana’s grandfather) was not living there.

In 1904, Walter married Edith Annie Pady from Ilfracombe.

Six years later, Diana’s father, Walter Norman Caryl, was born.

Norman, as he was known, was to marry into the Hopkins family – Joan Mary to be precise.

The wedding of Diana’s maternal grandparents in 1911. (0611580)

Earlier, her family had briefly emigrated to New Zealand, Diana’s maternal grandfather Arthur Hopkins having been there in 1885. The dalliance with Antipodean life was relatively short, however. ‘We think that they might have come back after there was a big volcanic eruption,’ said the Guernsey-based grand-daughter, ‘but there had also been an economic depression.’

An 1881 census shows Hopkins as having hailed from Portsea in Australia where he had farmed 23 acres. His father (Diana’s great-grandfather) Charles Hopkins, had been born in 1831 in Lymington in Hampshire and was a boilermaker in the docks.

Diana has fond memories of her grandfather, Arthur.

‘He was a gentle, intelligent man with a wonderful baritone voice, who died in 1972 – the last of my grandparents.’

Sadly, in his declining years, he had lost both his legs after problems possibly as the result of trench foot contracted in the First World War.

He had fought as a telegraphy engineer at Ypres, Somme and Paschendale and had taken a marvellous collection of photographs of war in the trenches.

As the war was declared, Diana’s mother, Joan, was born in Upminster near London where she lived until her marriage to Diana’s father, Norman.

He had been educated at boarding school near Warminster, Wiltshire, and had studied in London at Northampton Technical College, now City University.

To this day, the university has courses leading to ophthalmic qualifications.

In the early 1930s Norman became the first professionally qualified optician in the family and practised at his father’s business at 16, High Street Arcade, in Cardiff.

Joan attended Pitman’s College and came top in the national shorthand exams. This secured her employment with Royal Assurance at the Royal Exchange in the City of London in an impressive colonnaded building next to the Bank of England.

She went on to become the secretary and personal assistant to the managing director.

Joan and Norman met on holiday in Newquay and were married on 5 April 1939 at the Church of St Clement Danes, known as the RAF Church, in The Strand, London.

Diana’s mother’s wedding gown and headdress were designed by Peggy Allen, then a leading London dress designer and Joan’s cousin. Her headdress bearing a dove of peace appeared in several national newspapers.

On 27 April conscription was introduced and on 3 September war was declared.

Joan and Norman had started their holiday in St-Cast, Brittany (a late

Geoff and Diana on their wedding day, pictured with best man Nick van Leuven, right. (0611575)

honeymoon) on 18 August and the imminent prospect of war caused them to end their holiday and return on a crowded boat from St Malo on 25 August.

Norman joined the RAF where he worked in the maintenance of cockpit instruments. From 1942 to the end of the war in 1945 he served in Murree, then in India. Nowadays, following partition, it is in Pakistan, close to Rawalpindi and not far from the Afghan border and troubled Kabul.

Sadly, Diana’s father contracted malaria there, but between serious bouts still enjoyed playing sport, particularly hockey. He was a member of the team that won the North-West Frontier Cup in 1945.

Joan spent the war in Oxford with her parents. Her father, Arthur, worked for Shell Oil in London. His job was relocated to Oxford for the duration of the war.

Following the end of the conflict, Joan and Norman returned to Wales where they set up home at 27, Victoria Road, Penarth, and Norman resumed working in his father’s business.

Diana remembers her father as being a quiet, reserved, professional man, but learned from her mother that he had been more gregarious and outgoing before the war, having become very different when he came back.

Although fond and loving of her father, Diana had an closer relationship with her mother. ‘We had the same sort of interests,’ she said.

After her marriage brought her to Guernsey, she was delighted when her parents came to live here in 1983 at Clos du Moulin, St Martin’s.

Norman died aged 87 in 1997 while Joan survived another five years.