Nobody gets forgotten
Every member gets a page, a portrait and a place on the tree — from newborns to great-grandparents.
Home / Our Story
Five generations, one story
Ferngate Lineage began at a kitchen table in 1962, with a shoebox of photographs and a grandmother who remembered everything. Today it is the living record of our whole family.
Ferngate History
It started with a shoebox of photographs
In 1962, Helen Wren spread three generations of portraits across her kitchen table and began writing names on the back of each one. Her rule was simple: nobody in this family gets forgotten. Sixty years later, her grandchildren keep that promise with this site — every member, every date, every story in one place.
What began as a single drawer of letters is now a living archive: birthdays we celebrate, anniversaries we honour, reunions we plan, and prints we hang on our walls.
5Generations
120+Members recorded
60Years of reunions
4kPhotos archived
Our Timeline
Milestones of the family
1934 – The beginning
Helen Frances Wren is born, the matriarch whose memory would one day hold the whole family together.
1962 – The shoebox
Helen starts the archive at her kitchen table, dating and naming every photograph she owns.
1988 – The first reunion
Forty-two relatives gather under the heritage oak. The reunion becomes a yearly promise.
2015 – The great digitising
Robert Alex Ferngate scans all 4,000 photographs and builds the first digital family tree.
2026 – Ferngate Lineage
The archive becomes this living website — open to every cousin, in-law and grandchild, wherever they are.
What We Keep
Three promises we make
Dates are honoured
Birthdays are celebrated here each week, and anniversaries of those we've lost are marked with care.
Stories stay true
Memories are recorded in the words of the people who lived them, checked against the archive.
Gather with us this December
Three generations around one table. Come to the Winter Hearth Gathering and add your chapter to the story.
Join the Gathering