Family that can trace its roots back 624 years

The Sly family in Rowington can trace their ancestry back to 1388, with the most famous member of the family an actor called William Sly who worked with Shakespeare and had shares in the Globe Theatre.

Dorothy Sly organised the meeting of the family at the Tom O’ The Wood pub after the cousin of her late husband, also called William, said the only time the family met was at funerals.

To her surprise, 45 people came. The oldest member of the family present was Roy Barnett, 82, while the youngest was eight-year-old Adrienne Wombwell.

She said: “It was amazing how the grapevine worked when some second cousins we didn’t know we had turned up.

“We had people from as far away as the Forest of Dean, London and High Wycombe.”

She should not have been so surprised at having such far-flung relations. Wealthy landowners for many years, branches of the family moved abroad, with a later William Sly naming the town of Bushwood in Maryland, and a Robert Sly settling in Florida. Some moved to Australia, and even Lithuania and Transylvania.

When their descendants began visiting the village the family asked Lapworth historian Peter Hill to write a book. Shakespeare’s father owned Shakespeare Hall in the village, and the family’s name appears in Twelfth Night, believed to have been partly written there.

Although she was born in Birmingham and married into the family, Mrs Sly admits to enjoying telling people that her son’s ancestor knew Shakespeare.

But she laments the fact her late husband was the last Sly to live in the village and fears that property prices mean young members of the family can no longer afford to live where generations of their ancestors were born and died.

She added: “Times move on, but we’re all made up of the genes of our ancestors. It’s something to be proud of.”