Cheryl Who Do You Think You Are?

Could you turn it up a little bit?

Pop star Cheryl is a multi-platinum selling artist and performer.

# We gotta fight, fight, fight Fight for this love... #

Performing, for me, has always been a huge part of my life.

My mother always said to me that I came out of her knowing

what I wanted to do, and who I was.

Cheryl rose to fame on the TV talent show Popstars: The Rivals,

winning a place in the band Girls Aloud.

After a series of top ten hits, Cheryl joined the judging panel

on The X Factor and launched her solo career.

Now, as one of the most photographed women in the world,

she's graced the covers of magazines like Vogue.

I'm quite extrovert in the performance side

and the show business side, I guess. That's where I let loose,

but in my private, everyday life I'm quite reserved.

I'm quite shy in a lot of ways.

Born Cheryl Tweedy in 1983, Cheryl grew up

on a Newcastle council estate in a large family.

There was five kids in the house, so it was always crazy.

And it was always nice being one of many, you know,

you felt like a little gang, a little team.

I was always at dance class,

which was just a tiny little dance studio above the Co-op, actually.

But I absolutely loved it.

I was there, like, three or four days a week,

from tiny, from three.

Nothing, like, glamorous, if you like, just hard work.

Cheryl now lives in London,

but is proud of her roots and wants to know more about

her family's history.

Over the years, as you get a bit older you start to wonder, right,

where do I come from?

I feel like I should be deeply rooted to the north-east.

I would think so.

I feel that way.

Me dad, I think, is Geordie to the core,

and has been for centuries.

My mother's side of the family always feels a bit more mysterious,

for some reason. I just would really like to have

those questions answered once and for all.

That sounded really good.

No more.

One more? One more for luck?

-Yeah, why not?

-OK.

Cheryl's family still live in Newcastle,

so she's decided to start her search there.

Her youngest brother, Garry,

is giving her a lift back to their old neighbourhood.

This is just, literally, where I grew up, all these roads.

That's the church, which used to be the bingo.

-Church?

-Yeah.

-There's no bingo?

The bingo has moved into the church.

-What?

-They've done a swap. There's Heaton Bingo Club, in the church.

-You're joking?

-They have swapped around.

-For what reason?

-And now the church is the bingo,

-and the bingo is the church.

-That's crazy.

-It's so random, isn't it?

I used to work in that cafe.

JJ's. It's still called JJ's.

Cheryl's parents separated when she was 11.

Her dad, Garry Snr, still lives in the same area.

Cheryl wants to find out what he knows about the family history.

Dad!

-Hi, sweetheart.

-You all right?

-Aye, come in.

-I haven't seen you for a while.

-I know.

I've got a few photos I want to show you.

Well, I know him.

-Well, that would be me.

-God, how old are you on there?

-I'm 17.

-17.

-Yeah.

-I've got your face shape on there.

I'm a proper Tweedy, like, aren't I?

Yeah. That's your grandad, with Uncle George.

Garry's father, Brian Tweedy, died in 1980

when Garry was just 17 years old.

We lost our dad at the age of 39.

-Do you remember him, Da?

-Yeah, sure, yeah.

As much as you can remember somebody for 17 years.

I know, it's crazy. It's mad now that I'm, like, in my 30s,

to think he's just a few years older than me when he died.

That's your great-grandad.

-What's his name?

-William.

-William Tweedy?

-Billy, he used to get.

He was a crane driver in the shipyards.

So we've been here for at least three generations?

At least, yeah. And that's Nora, that's your great-gran, with Bill.

So she was your nana?

Yes. My nana, your great-gran.

-Nora?

-Nora, yeah.

What a nice name.

-Nora.

-Nora.

And the last one I've got is Nora's mam.

-Nora's mam?

-Yeah.

So your great-gran?

So that's my great-great-gran?

-That picture?

-Yes.

-Kelso.

-Kelso?

That was her name then, yeah. Kelso. Mary Kelso.

Aye, Mary Kelso.

It's amazing to have photographs though,

not just names.

They've all got good teeth.

-What's that?

-Well, I've got hold of a copy of a family tree,

and it's mainly to do with me dad's side.

From me, moving up the Tweedy side, coal miners.

Coal miners.

And we move up through the Kelsos, and particularly this...

I know nothing about that.

Mariners, sailors.

-No way.

-Yeah.

So there's James Laing, mariner.

John Wood Laing, mariner.

Wife, Caroline.

And then the father of those is also a mariner.

-Yeah.

-So that's two generations. I didn't see that coming at all.

Not at all. Coal miners, yeah, maybe.

And I really love that idea, but mariners...

That's a different thing altogether, isn't it?

See, it's interesting, because I hate the sea.

I've always been afraid of it.

And I used to have really bad dreams when I was little

about drowning in the sea, being an old woman with her headscarf on,

and I was the old woman.

-Well, there you are then.

-Isn't that weird?

-Mm-hmm.

Very funny. So I hope you've got your sea legs.

Cheryl's discovered that on her father's side she's descended from

a family of mariners called the Laings.

She wants to know more about her seafaring ancestors.

She's come to the Discovery Museum in Newcastle to meet Carolyn Ball,

who runs the archives.

-Hi.

-Hi, so I was wondering if you could help me a bit?

I can try.

I've brought over this family tree, which is basically, at the moment,

-all I have.

-OK.

And I was looking through it all, but I'm really focused,

and want to know more about these three mariners up here.

OK.

John Wood's quite an unusual sort of name.

So what we found is what's called a mariner's ticket,

which we've got here,

which is what they would need to go to sea.

-Right.

-So if I just take it very carefully out of that for you,

and if you want to have a look.

So it says John Wood Laing, born...

..North Shields, 1826.

30th of January.

It looks as though he went to sea as a mariner's apprentice.

How old was he? He was... 1845, so he was 19.

Oh, wow. Super young.

-Five foot six.

-He wasn't particularly tall, five foot six.

Nothing changed there then.

"Brown hair. Fair complexion.

"Marks on person - cut on forehead."

Wow, that's his signature.

Yeah. This is what allowed him to go on board ship,

and to actually sail around the world.

It was his permit, if you like, to work.

It's crazy to think that I'm holding it, and he used to hold it.

-Yeah.

-Isn't it?

Yeah, and it would be a really important document for him as well.

-So it was crucial...

-It gives you the chills.

Cheryl's four-times great-grandfather, John Wood Laing,

started work as an apprentice mariner in the 1840s.

By this time, Britain was a powerful seafaring nation,

and ruled an empire that stretched from North America to India.

Trade was its lifeblood,

and mariners like John in Britain's expanding merchant service

were crucial to transporting goods and people across the world.

It was a career that offered adventure and opportunity.

We did find something else about John Wood Laing.

-Right.

-So we wondered whether you would like to have a look at that?

-I'd love to.

-OK.

I'm not going to tell you what this is.

Perhaps you'd like to open it and have a look.

Oh.

Wow.

-That's him?

-That's him.

Wow. And is that Caroline?

Yeah, that's Caroline.

He's amazing.

He's so handsome.

This is quite an unusual pose for a photograph.

-Unusual?

-Yes. If you look, you would usually expect Victorians

-to be quite formal in a photograph.

-They are quite relaxed.

Quite relaxed, you can see she's touching his thigh,

and he's got his hand on her shoulder.

Though it's probably not their wedding photograph,

they were married before this type of photograph was developed.

There is something special about it.

You just get, like, a real sense of,

almost like they were crazy about each other.

-It does look like it, doesn't it?

-Doesn't it?

Like a real sense of affection.

Like he's being protective and she's being...

I've never seen one so informal.

He's so cool.

He's ahead of his time, like by a few centuries.

Yeah.

-Thank you.

-That's all right.

I almost don't want to give you it back.

I'm going to have to take it back, I'm afraid.

But, because it's such a special thing,

we thought you might want to take a copy of it away with you.

Wow. Thank you so much.

John and Caroline were married in 1849 in North Shields.

Cheryl wants to know more about their life there.

So obviously we've worked out that John Wood Laing was in

North Shields, so the obvious thing to look at would be the 1851 census.

And this is the one for North Shields, which includes...

Caroline? That's her, right?

That's her.

They lived in 2 Gibson Bank, and then Mary Jane, daughter.

-There's somebody missing.

-John.

-John.

-She's the head of the family.

But it doesn't say she was widowed.

-Maybe he's at sea.

-Perhaps he was at sea.

I hope so.

So everything points back to...

..North Shields. I guess that's where I've got to go next.

I think so.

Cheryl's heading to North Shields,

just a few miles up the coast from Newcastle,

at the mouth of the River Tyne.

She's arranged to meet historian Dr Dan Jackson at the North Shields

Registry Office, to find out more about John and Caroline.

Cheryl, so if you look out this window here, you get a really good

sense of the geography of North Shields.

That's amazing. I've got a copy of a photograph of my

great-great-great- great-grandparents.

-Fantastic.

-John Wood and Caroline.

-And he was a mariner?

-He was a mariner, yeah.

Mariners were known to be really snappy dressers.

That's what I said, he looks amazing.

They had a lot of swagger about them, it's what they were known for.

And then I got this census from 1851.

They are living at Gibson's Bank.

Which is just there, can you see where the greenery is?

-No way.

-That was the bank itself.

But they lived on these stairs, because the land, as you can see,

is quite a steep bank.

So you had these precarious houses, kind of clinging to the river bank

where all of these people lived on top of one another.

-Wow.

-This was known as the Low Town,

and that's where the sort of working class people lived.

This was the place where all the spit and sawdust pubs would

have been, cos you can imagine all these sailors coming in to the Tyne.

Yeah, of course.

And the sort of things that sailors like to spend their money on was all

catered for down on the Low Road.

So it was the sort of place you had to have your wits about you.

-Right.

-It was known to be quite a violent place at times.

And up on the high ground was called the High Town,

and that's where the posher houses were, where the big houses were,

Dockwray Square and Northumberland Square, and places like that.

So there is a very obvious difference between...

-Class.

-Yeah, a class divide in the town.

So they would have lived in, like, a small house here.

Yeah, there's a report from the time that says people in Gibson's Stairs

were living in about four to a room.

-Oh, wow.

-And there's all sorts of industries, there is everything

you can think of - shipbuilding, sailmaking, mast-making,

anchor smiths, you've got roperies where women used to work.

So it was incredibly busy.

When John and Caroline lived here, North Shields was a thriving port.

The town's location at the mouth of the River Tyne meant easy access

to the north-east's coalfields,

which were fuelling Britain's Industrial Revolution.

Coal was loaded onto ships and sent down the coast to London,

and also as far afield as the Baltic and North America.

Sometimes men were at sea for two or three years at a time.

-Two or three years?

-Yeah, depending on where they were going.

So I guess the women then had to be quite confident, tough, independent,

if their men are away at sea for two or three years,

and they are living in an environment like that,

you'd have to be a tough woman.

Absolutely. And the women of North Shields are known to look out

for each other as well, to support each other.

Can you tell anything from this photo?

He looks like he's doing well.

He's probably qualified, or his apprenticeship is over.

I would have thought, just judging by the clothes he is wearing,

if nothing else. And he's got his cap at a jaunty angle,

he's got the expensive watch chain.

It looks like a velvet waistcoat as well.

All pretty expensive gear.

-Really?

-Yeah. He's doing well, and his wife's dressed smartly as well,

by the looks of things. That's a brilliant photograph.

Isn't it? Fascinating.

A useful place to go next would be to find out about his career at sea,

see where he went.

I'm really getting a sense of John Wood Laing and Caroline,

more so the fact that I've seen a picture,

and I'm aware of how they actually looked,

how they dressed, where they lived.

There's definitely a strong sense of tough,

northern, Geordie women starting...

..with Caroline. So that tradition seems to have carried on,

and I'm proud of the fact that they were strong, tough and hard working.

Cheryl's meeting maritime historian Dr Helen Doe at the nearby

Old Low Light Museum to find out about John's career at sea.

So I have this photograph

of my great-great- great-great-grandparents.

That is a wonderful photograph.

-Isn't it?

-It really is lovely.

So far what I do know is that he had an apprenticeship ticket,

and that he lived on the Bank there in North Shields.

Your ancestor, John, finished his apprenticeship...

..and he then became a second mate,

which is actually quite a good step up on ships.

And he was working in the coal trade.

This is the first document I've got for you which tells you

something about him.

So this is...a report of character.

1851.

John Wood Laing - very good.

Oh, wow, so on this page he's the only one that has a very good

-for his conduct.

-Yes, indeed.

What does that say? Sobriety.

Sobriety, very good. So he wasn't really a drinker, I guess.

That's right. That was important on ships.

-I'm sure, yeah.

-So you've got one "very good", which is your ancestor,

two "goods", and this gentleman here who's just got "middling".

So this ship is the Brack, and at the end of the voyage

the master would give them their discharge papers,

which would show how well they've done.

Reputations could be made over a long time,

but equally could be lost quite quickly.

Have a look at this one that I found for you.

Now, this is a ship called The Spirit Of The Deep.

Right. "Date of the occurrence entered with day and hour."

So there was an occurrence?

-Mm-hmm.

-Oops.

So you've got the location...

-Hong Kong?

-Yeah.

James Laing.

That's his brother.

So he's on another ship but in Hong Kong.

Oh, wow.

James Laing was seven years younger than Cheryl's four-times

great-grandfather, John,

and had followed in his big brother's footsteps to sea.

And what does that say? He's badly behaved?

-Yes.

-What did he do?

Went ashore without leave.

So he's gone AWOL, basically.

And that was in December, on the 21st.

And then Monday the 22nd...

"James Laing returned..."

"Onboard unfit."

"Unfit for the...

"..remaining of the day."

Yeah.

-Until...

-The 29th!

What the hell was he doing?

So from the 22nd to the 29th he was unfit.

And it doesn't specify?

Maybe he was drinking?

Perhaps he was drunk.

For four days, five days?

A week.

Now if we go down a little bit further, there's a little more here.

So we've now got one month later,

we've gone from Hong Kong to Singapore.

And we've got 11.30am...

"James Laing..."

"Called me..."

"A bloody snot."

Yeah.

-What does this say?

-"And struck me..."

And struck me?

-"..in the face."

-Oh, wow.

This is the mate,

and he's saying, "He struck me in the face,

"for which I put him in irons."

Then, the next day, you've got James Laing again,

this time he's taken before the master,

found guilty and he's fined...

-..for the offence.

-That's a big contrast to his brother.

But, again, quite an intriguing character.

And obviously liked...

a bit of the naughty side.

-Shall we go back to John?

-Please.

Now, look at this.

A certificate.

He was a master? He became a master?

Was he then, like, second, or next to the captain?

He IS the captain.

Oh, he is the captain?

Yes. Master mariner means you have the ability to be the captain

of a ship. He's done it.

That's incredible.

John became a master mariner in 1855, at the age of 29.

By this time, the merchant service had introduced tough exams

to ensure only the most qualified men became masters.

John would have needed to be able to read and write,

as well as navigate by the stars.

Masters were also responsible for delivering the cargo

to its final destination, and bringing the payment back.

Ship owners were desperate to find men they could trust,

and John would have been in demand.

Turn over, have a look on the other side.

114 Church Way, North Shields.

Yeah.

That address shows that he's really come a long way.

Church Way is...

-..up there, High Town.

-Oh, wow.

So he's now living in a more salubrious area.

I feel really, really proud of him, actually.

-He's done so well.

-And you should be.

He's got a better life for his wife and his children.

She's certainly now got status as well.

-Really?

-Hmm.

Can we go back to your photograph a moment?

-Yes, absolutely.

-We'll have a look at that

in a slightly different light now.

I wonder if by now he was already a master.

It's quite possible that was taken to celebrate this great big step.

Wow.

And no wonder they are looking so proud.

This is a photograph showing status.

And that's probably why it was taken.

It makes complete sense now.

And the first ship that he became master of was called La Belle.

Isn't that nice?

And here is the final document I've got for you.

"Agreement for foreign going ship, La Belle."

The 19th of August...

..1857.

So he's going from Conwy, and it's going to Quebec.

That's him away from home, I guess, for...

Months at a time.

Several months by the time he's got across.

And as captain, as the master of the ship,

he is in charge of selecting the crew.

And this is the crew that he had from Wales.

Not James? Oh, God.

-James Laing.

-Oh, he is.

-He's here.

-He's got his brother.

-Oh, dear.

Maybe he behaved for his brother.

James has been in trouble on the Spirit Of The Deep,

and you can see it shows here that the last ship he was on was

the Spirit Of The Deep.

So he obviously hasn't had any work in between.

I'm actually not surprised that he recruited his brother, James.

-Why's that?

-It's just typical Geordie mentality to always

keep your family involved. I mean, I'm sure any other master

wouldn't have wanted James aboard given his...

Given his background.

But, no, I reckon that John could have kept James in check,

and he would have liked to give him another opportunity,

a chance to earn some money.

I suppose, and that's very typical still, now,

of the Geordie mentality.

It feels really nostalgic, actually, coming back here.

I haven't been back here for a long time.

We used to come here as children and play on the rocks,

pick sea snails, build sandcastles.

This is real childhood stuff for me.

This is real memories.

John Wood Laing and Caroline probably came here.

They probably knew this exact spot.

When I first started off researching about John Wood,

I was finding out that he lived in a poor area and he wasn't really

in a good way for his wife, and having a young baby,

so I was a bit concerned about that.

And what happened thereafter, and to find out that actually, it improved,

is such an amazing thing to witness and to discover.

And I feel like, in a way, that's kind of what happened with me.

So I relate to the fact that you have to...

You know, hard work pays off.

When we were younger, if, you know, a friend or family member

got into trouble, you'd say, "You little toerag."

So James, to me, seems to be that member of the family.

I kind of like him. I've got a little bit of a soft spot for him.

Cheryl knows that John and James set sail for Quebec in Canada

in August 1857.

It was a journey that could take several weeks.

She's searching local newspapers for information about their voyage.

Oh, here we go.

OK, here we go.

The 6th of March, 1858.

"The La Belle, Laing master, sailed from Quebec on the 10th of November

"for London, was spoken on the 14th of November between Gross

"and Crane Islands and has not since been heard of."

Wow.

"Was spoken on"?

It's hard to understand the meaning.

"Has not since been heard of."

There's obviously a...

..problem there. A big one.

On La Belle's return voyage,

John and his brother James would have sailed

up the St Lawrence River, past Gross and Crane Islands

and out towards the North Atlantic.

Cheryl's arranged to meet Dr Simon Wills,

at the Watch House Museum near North Shields to find out

what the newspaper report means.

So I have this cutting from the newspaper.

Which is quite concerning, really.

I don't understand all of the language,

which I was hoping you can help me with.

Well, "was spoken on", in Victorian times, ships' captains,

when two ships passed each other, they'd hail each other.

And so Captain Laing would have shouted out,

"La Belle from Shields, heading for London."

And the captain of the other ship would make a note of that,

and when he got to port he'd report that he'd seen La Belle.

-Right.

-It was just a way of keeping track of ships in those days,

because there wasn't any other way of communicating,

no radio or anything like that.

I've got something to show you here.

This is a list, a crew list of everyone who was on

that voyage of La Belle.

Yeah. OK.

So this says Port of Shields.

"Count of crew,

"foreign going ship to be delivered at the end of the voyage.

"John Wood Laing, James Laing."

It says "deaths" at the top.

-So they all died?

-They did, I'm afraid.

What happened is the insurance company usually decided,

after a period of time, that the ship would be written off,

and that's when the men would be formally declared as dead.

Some of them are so young as well - this chap, Robert Roberts, only 17.

So your ancestor was pretty much the oldest person on board, at 32.

-Very sad.

-My age.

-Yeah.

-So sad.

-We don't know exactly what happened to La Belle.

This particular part of the coast of Canada was very dangerous,

it was the winter, November time,

there's lots of ice floating around in the St Lawrence River,

lots of other ships.

There was fog, storms would suddenly blow up from nowhere.

And ships would just disappear.

And they just vanished?

How long would a ship take to sink like that?

Or would...? I don't...

Depends on what happened.

It could be as little as 15 minutes, half an hour.

Really?

Even if they were thrown overboard or managed to get off the ship,

the waters that time of the year would have been freezing cold,

so they wouldn't have lived very long.

La Belle was the only ship John ever captained.

It disappeared while on its return journey to England.

John, James and the entire crew were lost.

In the mid-19th century, being a mariner was a treacherous job.

There were over 800 shipwrecks a year off the coast of Britain alone,

and transatlantic voyages such as La Belle's were even riskier.

Ships could be blown hundreds of miles off course,

and many, like La Belle, were never heard of again.

Caroline was left a widow with no financial support

and a young family to bring up.

Caroline would have only been 29.

And on the family tree I have,

my great-great-great-grandfather is another John Wood Laing,

but I don't know, obviously, when John was born.

I've got something that can help you here.

This is a birth certificate.

Yeah. John Wood, boy - father, John Wood Laing.

Mother, Caroline, in 1858.

May.

La Belle left England on the 19th of August 1857.

So she was actually pregnant the whole time.

Wow.

And John never saw his little boy.

-I know.

-That's so sad.

I now really wonder about Caroline and what she went on to be and do.

Well, we know from the 1861 census that Caroline went on

-to become a charwoman.

-You know that?

-Yes.

-What's a charwoman?

Well, sort of like an odd-jobs lady, really.

She'd take in sewing and do laundry for people, cleaning.

So it was quite a comedown, for her, having been a captain's wife.

At the bottom of the ladder really, in terms of income at the time.

She actually came from poverty,

and then I guess she went back to poverty.

I've got something else to show you.

This is a memorial card.

"In affectionate remembrance of John W Laing."

Would this have belonged to Caroline?

Yes, I think she would have had that made.

It's a very expensive thing to have made as well,

at a time when she had very little money.

It's been so well-kept.

"In the ship La Belle he went to sea,

"And thought not what his end might be.

"Now he lies buried in the deep,

"And has left his wife and children to weep.

"Though the raging sea o'er his body roll,

"Do thou, Lord Jesus, receive his soul."

I was hoping that he had a long and successful career

because of how hard he'd worked to get there,

and that the kids would have been OK,

and set up for life, and Caroline would have been good.

Yeah, I just feel...

I feel sad now.

I feel like I got to know John and Caroline.

I feel like I did get a sense of them, even as a couple,

the way she's holding him, the way he's holding her.

I just sense that they were really, really, madly in young love,

and it's a lovely feeling.

Cheryl now wants to find out about her mother's side of the family,

and she's back in Newcastle to see her mum, Joan.

My mother is very much a friend, I can confide in her about anything.

It just feels a bit more mysterious on that side of the family -

I never heard stories, I never heard tales.

I think she had a lot of questions herself when I was growing up.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-You all right?

-Yeah.

Joan was born in Newcastle.

Her parents were Joseph and Olga Callaghan.

Olga was born in 1932, and grew up with her twin sister, Rene,

but Joan's always had questions

about the rest of her mother's family.

Even with me it was all hush-hush, it was.

Like there was a hidden...

There was a secret or something?

You weren't allowed to ask questions, or know anything.

It was, "Mind your own business, you should be seen and not heard."

You used to say that to us when we were little.

-No, I didn't.

-Yes, you did.

Well, I can't remember that.

I just remember me mam telling me once that she's got a big family,

there's about 11 of them.

But most of them are adopted.

-11 of them?

-11 on her side.

But I never, ever met any of them.

Never seen any of them.

-Do you not think that weird?

-I think it's very strange.

I do have a couple of old photographs I can show you.

Hopefully they'll lead somewhere.

That's my mam and dad getting married.

He's quite handsome, isn't he, me dad?

You look the double of your mam.

Really? Do you think?

Yeah, I do.

So this is...

..Auntie Rene's wedding.

So, there is Auntie Rene, obviously.

You can see...

..me mam, and this is my nana, your great nana.

-Oh, God.

-She was called Edith Annie.

-Which is...

-She looks happy on her daughter's wedding day.

Doesn't she? Yeah.

-Wow.

-What is very strange is I never knew the grandad,

whether he had passed away, or what happened, whether they divorced.

I don't know what went on.

It was never spoken of,

so I would really be interested to find out who me grandad was.

This is all I've got of the older photographs.

-That's it?

-That's it.

That's it? What am I...?

Well, the only thing I've really got to go off of is me nana

and her sister's name.

So, do you know their maiden name?

The maiden name was Ridley.

Joan believes that her mother, Olga, came from a large family,

but doesn't know anything more about them.

Cheryl wants to get to the bottom of this,

so she's ordered the marriage certificates for her grandmother

and her grandmother's twin sister to find the name

of her great-grandfather.

OK, so here we've got the certificate for me nana,

in 1954.

Father's name and surname - Joseph Ridley, deceased.

So Rene's marriage was in '52,

and he was deceased by then.

Joseph Wilson Ridley.

So I'm going to now see if I can find Joseph Wilson Ridley.

Here we go.

OK, so this is the 1911 census.

"Name and surname, Joseph Wilson Ridley,

"head of the family.

"Age, 29."

So his occupation was a grocery warehouse man.

So he worked at the Co-op.

OK.

Mary Ann Ridley.

Wife.

Me mam said her name was Edith Annie.

So...

something's off here.

Something's off here.

Cheryl's discovered that her great-grandfather

was called Joseph Wilson Ridley.

He lived in County Durham, not far from Newcastle.

She's also found out that in 1911 he had a wife called Mary Ann,

and they had three children together. Cheryl's not sure

how her great-grandmother, Edith Annie, fits in.

She's also found Joseph in Army Service Records online.

"Name - Ridley, Joseph Wilson.

"Regiment, Durham, LI.

"Your service records from the 15th of the 12th, 1914.

"Place, France."

So he must have gone to France.

Cheryl's learnt that Joseph served with the Durham Light Infantry

during World War I.

He volunteered to join up soon after war broke out at the age of 33.

Cheryl wants to know more about Joseph's service and has decided

to follow in his footsteps.

I find it pretty amazing that my mam's grandfather

has been completely forgotten,

considering he fought in the First World War.

You would think there would be tales and stuff like that passed down,

but nobody seems to know anything.

A distant relative Cheryl doesn't know has sent a letter

with some more information about Joseph.

So I have this letter...

..that I'd like to read.

Oh, wow.

So handsome, again.

"Dear Relative, I am also a descendant of Joseph Wilson Ridley.

"He was my grandfather,

"married to my grandmother, Mary Ann,

"and they had eight or nine children together before she died in 1930.

"Joseph was never really discussed in our family,

"other than referenced in rather derogatory terms as Old Man Ridley.

"It seems after the death of my grandmother, a Mrs Burton

"was brought in as a housekeeper...

"..to look after the children,

"and then she fell pregnant with the twin girls."

That's my great nana.

Wow.

"It created quite a scandal in the community.

"A Ridley trait is that most of us have a quick temper,

"and from what I've been told, Grandad Ridley was no exception.

"Some in the family say he was troubled and volatile,

"and his temper would often be fuelled by excessive drinking.

"But he also bore other Ridley traits - undying generosity,

"and was, at times, quite fearless.

"When his photographs surfaced I felt a bit sorry that he seemed

"to have become sidelined and forgotten.

"There he was, in a soldier's uniform,

"and he must have fought in World War I."

Wow. That actually explains so much of why he was never talked about.

So interesting.

And he had, in the end, 11 children,

which is what me mam said.

Me great nana must have been the young housekeeper that...

..got involved with...

..Mr Old Man Ridley.

When Cheryl's great-grandmother, Edith Annie Burton,

had the twins in 1932, Joseph was a widower with a large family,

and a war veteran.

To find out more about her great-grandfather's war experience,

Cheryl's meeting military historian Dr Helen McCartney.

In 1915, Joseph was sent to the Western Front,

where the British and their allies were fighting the Germans.

By early 1916, Joseph's battalion was here near Ypres in Belgium.

Something I do know is that he joined the regiment in Durham.

But I have no idea what he did

or anything else, really, other than that.

He joins the 11th Battalion, and the 11th Battalion is quite interesting.

It's a different kind of unit than he trained with -

it's a pioneer unit.

And this...

..is a badge that he would have worn.

Wow.

What does that actually mean?

This here is a pick, this one here...

-Is a gun.

-Yes, a rifle.

And that kind of sums up what the pioneers did.

They were mainly a labour unit, but they were also trained as infantry,

so they were also soldiers.

And that's what this represents, labour and fighting?

-That's right.

-Wow.

When Joseph arrived on the Western Front he joined a war

that had reached stalemate.

The flat, bare landscape of northern France and Belgium offered

little cover, and both sides were forced to dig down for protection.

The British Army realised they needed to build

an extensive network of trenches,

so established specialist Pioneer battalions like Joseph's.

They were trained to fight, but also to dig.

Joseph was expected to work throughout the night and in

all weathers, often in open ground in sight of enemy snipers.

If you have a look down here,

you can see that they are actually quite narrow.

Yeah, very narrow.

And they are lined with these corrugated iron boards.

This is the kind of thing Joseph would have been making

and putting in to shore up the sides of the trench.

Cos it's pretty wet round here and it gets very flooded,

so a lot of the trenches would fall in,

and he would have to keep digging out these trenches.

That was one of the main things they were doing around here.

It's very small, considering they would have been quite big men,

I would think. How many men would there have been lined up in here?

Working parties were anything between 50 and 150 men.

All in this trench?

All in these trenches, either digging them or digging them out,

repairing them. You can see that the trenches are kind of zigzagged -

part of the reason for this is if a shell falls in one section

of the line, it doesn't reverberate along the rest,

and so the unfortunate people in that get affected by the shell,

-but not the rest of the line.

-Right.

As well as digging trenches, Pioneers liked Joseph had to build

railways, roads and bridges to keep the British Army moving.

For their skilled work, Pioneers were paid an extra 2p a day

on top of their infantry wages.

One of the reasons

the 11th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry

turns into a Pioneer battalion is because it's full of miners,

and it's estimated right at the beginning it's about 95% miners.

And that gives them a huge advantage because they've been used to

hard physical labour. But Joseph isn't a miner,

he's a grocer, and I want to show you a diary entry from later

in the war which shows you how some members of the battalion

viewed people who didn't come from the same background as them.

Have a look at this here.

OK. "Draft of 52 men arrived,

"only three of these men were suitable for Pioneer Battalion.

"Grocers, agents, musicians, etc,

"are not fitted for the hard work of pioneering."

So that guy's not happy about people that are not miners or...

That's right, Joseph's going to have to work really,

really hard to prove himself.

You know, I always heard about trenches and how they were used,

but I never really thought about how they were actually made.

And knowing that Joseph was part of the labour of that is a big deal.

Helping the soldiers survive.

Reading that diary entry I think he was maybe struggling a little bit to

fit in. He probably had a bit of a tough time trying to prove himself.

In July 1916, Joseph's battalion was ordered south towards the Somme

in France, where a major offensive by the Allied army to break through

German lines had already begun.

The first day of battle had claimed more than 60,000 casualties,

and by the time the fighting ended months later, that number would rise

to over one million.

The Battle of the Somme would prove to be

one of the most devastating campaigns of the war

and Joseph was heading straight into the middle of it.

It's actually pretty amazing to think I'm taking the same route

as Joseph would have been 100 years ago, exactly, more or less.

He would have been leaving the Belgium-France border,

headed to the Somme, which is where I'm now on the way to,

to prepare for battle.

He must have been absolutely terrified.

Cheryl's meeting battlefield guide Paul Reed

outside the village of Guillemont.

My great-grandfather was on the Belgium-France border,

so I don't know what he did when he left there and came here for battle,

and I was hoping you could help me with the rest.

Sure. He would have marched down to the Somme.

When you say march, though, you don't mean like, march? Oh, you do.

Yeah, when they marched down from Belgium, where you've come from,

they literally marched, they marched for an hour at a time.

It must have been for days?

Yeah, it would have taken days to get down here.

And when he got here the Battle of the Somme was two months old.

So they'd been fighting in that direction,

the beginning of the battle in July, and over two months, gradually,

they'd pushed the Germans back to a point where the artillery

had smashed this landscape to pieces.

It was just a lunar landscape.

When you look at photographs like these that show you the utter

devastation of this area.

This is the village of Guillemont, that we are standing close to now,

-as you can see, there's just nothing left.

-Wow.

Everything's destroyed.

By occupying Guillemont, the Germans were able to prevent the British

and French front lines from advancing together.

The British had already launched three failed attempts to take

the village at a cost of thousands of lives.

Now Joseph's battalion were ordered to prepare the ground

for one final push.

His battalion came from the edge of the wood over there towards here,

and they were coming forward to dig advanced trenches here,

so there was a shorter distance for the lads to move out

-across open ground.

-Right.

So that meant, for him, he was then exposed himself, standing there

digging a trench in the open to enable others to get cover.

-That's...

-A massive responsibility, a huge job.

-It is.

So on the 3rd of September 1916, his battalion was involved in an attack

across this ground from the edge of the woods, across what is now

these wheat fields, all very innocent today, but, of course,

in 1916 these were killing grounds with the Germans dug in here

with machine guns.

As his battalion advanced, Joseph had to march over ground

littered with the dead from previous battles.

And the resistance he faced when they reached the German defences

was ferocious.

After a bitter struggle, the British captured Guillemont

at a cost of almost 2,000 casualties.

But there was no rest for Joseph and the Pioneers.

His job was to assist in defending this village,

cos once you'd captured it the Germans would attack

-and try and take it back again.

-Right.

So you needed to put up defences, barbed wire, to stop them getting

back in, build machine gun positions, shelters for the infantry

and officers and so on. So he's out there, doing all that.

The Pioneers stayed there for days and days doing the work.

Theirs is a task really that never ends.

And they're exposed.

Very exposed.

-He was a brave man.

-Brave man, yeah.

So in the fighting they lost some of their leaders,

so your great-grandfather was suddenly promoted.

-Oh, wow.

-He was given promotion to Lance Corporal,

that's one stripe on his uniform.

He would have had to have proven himself, and worked hard to do so,

and I find it really, actually, quite lovely

under the circumstances.

I'm really proud of him.

It's actually surreal to think that we're stood here, like,

100 years later with the luxuries we now have because of their sacrifice.

Exactly. Exactly.

I mean, the Great War is one of those things that it's about

ordinary people, like your great-grandfather,

in extraordinary circumstances.

When we look at a battlefield like this 100 years later, I mean,

it looks, to all intents and purposes, as if it's recovered.

But the reality is, it's never really recovered.

Human remains are still uncovered every single year.

Oh, my God.

So, I mean, look in any direction now,

and you are looking to a place where there are still soldiers out there.

And it's one great big cemetery, really.

Back in them days nobody knew about post-traumatic stress

or really understood, or even cared about the after-care

for soldiers that survived.

So I'm really not surprised that he was drinking excessively.

He probably needed some form of escape,

and I'm sure that you would become quite an angry person after you'd

experienced some of the horrific things they did here.

The war dragged on for another two years of bloody fighting,

finally coming to an end in November 1918.

It took months to bring the troops home,

and Joseph returned to the UK the following summer,

having spent nearly four years on the Western Front.

He had seen the war through from start to finish.

Joseph went back to work at the Co-op,

and had a further four children with his wife, Mary Ann,

before her death in 1930.

Two years later, when Joseph was 50, Cheryl's great-grandmother,

Edith Annie Burton, gave birth to their twin daughters.

Joseph and Edith Annie were never married.

Joseph died in 1951,

eight years before Cheryl's mother Joan was born.

Joan never knew anything about her grandfather, not even his name.

Before she leaves France, Cheryl's visiting the nearby

Pozieres Memorial to pay her respects to some of the soldiers

of the Durham Light Infantry who never came home.

It really makes sense now,

it all comes together as to why nobody really spoke about Joseph,

and he was kind of a mystery in the family.

He may have had a bit of a reputation afterwards of being

a little bit disturbed, and he probably didn't want to talk

about his war stories.

I think there was a lot of men that didn't really talk about

their experiences, and therefore, nobody else did either.

And I would guess,

part of it was because my great-grandma was his housekeeper,

and in those days,

having children out of wedlock was seriously frowned upon.

So he was always a mystery, and now I can put a man to that mystery.

Before I set off on this journey I always had a great sense

of the north-east, and I always had a great...

instinct that I was rootedly from there.

This whole experience has really told me that it's true when they say

Northerners are made of tough stuff.

There's just a great sense of resilience and strength there,

and the fact that I'm from the north-east...

..all that time ago on both sides just is proof to me

that what I thought and what I felt was the truth.