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A Personal Search for One's Storey Ancestors The Storeys owned one pub. Now two stand on their former properties, The Mortal Man ( the story is that an 8' travelling man who did odd-jobs for people in Troutbeck, lies under the foundations) on our DrummelmireHead - the core of the building predates even the Storeys. The Queen's Head (Old Queen Anne, and therefore Queen of America as well as of the UK) is on our Townhead (not Browne's Townend). Despite the name of that last property being, literally, the town end of Troutbeck village, Long Green Head was many more miles up the rapidly harshening and ever more spectacular vale as it rose to the Kirkstone pass. We crossed the pass and down into Ullswater. Deciding on re-visiting the Western approaches to Troutbeck we drove again up Borrowdale (perhaps the most lovely valley in England), and thus to Wordsworth's Rydale. Further South we drove up. through, and down, the tortuous Wrynose and Hardknott passes, finally after negotiating the hair-pin bends and narrow passing-places, reaching a view of the sea at the old but beautifully preserved Hardknott Roman Fortress. Possibly built in one of the most forsaken spots of the Roman Empire. From there we could peer through the clouds at Scafell Pike and Scafell, England's highest peaks. Down through the Pass to mediaeval Muncaster Castle. The Storeys made and sold boats among their many activities, presumably on Lake Windermere onto which Troutbeck opens. The fishing was good, and easy. With all the mountains beck's and streams, a man could conserve his flocks and herds !. Arable land was farmed in the fertile fields along the Troutbeck, and cattle in the middle meadows. High up above the woods the sheep grazed on the High Moors. Distances were small, but the natural barriers of mountains and of water cut off communities. The first Richard Storey in Troutbeck had few miles to cover as the crow flies, but many established and isolated communities to cross. Perhaps he was driven by a love he had met at a County gathering in Kendal ? Perhaps a similar yearning for adventure led my great-great-grandfather South out of Westmoreland into Lancashire, where his son was to become four-times mayor of Garstang, and his brother a Knight Batchelor, Sir Thomas. Another son, my grandfather, was to move to Warwickshire and to Hampstead,London, from where my Grandfather was to join Cecil John Rhodes on the greatest private venture of all time on behalf of his country - no less than the attempt to carve a new country under the British flag in central Africa. Completely Politically Incorrect today, but a dream such as might have inspired Ryder Haggard. What a dream. All done by a relatively few volunteers working for a private company, that took those volunteers through five wars, unexplored territory, and innumerable skirmishes. A spirit no doubt moulded by all those generations of Cumbrian yeomen and gentlemen. Geoff Storey   1