Last Friday I went round a stately home and was amazed at the quality of the place, and even more at the staff, all volenteers, with their knowledge and enthusiasm for the building. Within one room we were talking with a guide and he pointed out that the clock face had roman numerals and the number 4 was wrong, I looked at to my surprise it waswritten IIII not IV as I had been taughts, why was this asked the guide, I just did not have an answer but promised to find out, and to my surprise most clock faces with roman numerals has this foilble.

A quick search on the inernet, though sorted out a reasonable answer, it seems that the widest accepted aurgument for 4 being displayed as IIII and not as IV is the following. Imagine a watch face with roman numerals and look at the numerals opposite each other, all of them are in perfect balance, except for the heavy weight VII & IV so if you replace IV with IIII the optical balance is restored ie: VIII & IIII

Another explination is that IV is an abbreviation for Jupiter in Roman times so they decided to use IIII so that their public clocks did not have 1 2 3 GOD 4 written on them.

I like the balance explanation best.

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For many years I thought that the name Scaysbrook was pretty rare, I had heard of the odd mention of the name in Oxford and seen a reference in a northern telephone directory. I had done a simple Descendants tree from what I had learned from my own immediate family. But it wasn’t until I went onto the net and did a search, that I managed to find a Scaysbrook on the net with an Email address, after some basic correspondence, we managed to link our two families together, and establish that Craig was a 9th cousin.

It was during this time that I heard mentioned that an old lady in Australia was worth contacting. After a swift letter, I received a parcel which contained all here research notes, this took the best part of a year to wade through and enter into a computer program called Gene.

At that time I was fairly new to Genealogy and did not know if there were any programs that would be cheap and simple to use. Gene fitted the bill just fine. I then started to fill in all the other info I was obtaining from local searches and from the help I was now receiving from the Oxford and Gloucestershire Family history Society, they were most helpful .

I then happened to find another contact this time in Australia she helped me link here family into the tree. Again fate took its turn and my contact in Australia told me of an advert in the Sydney paper looking for Scaysbrooks, this I replied to and found another Scaysbrook, after a couple of letters via snail male, I sent here all the info I had including the papers I recieved , it turns out that most of it was supplied by here in the first place. Her interest is the growth of the Scaysbrook name is Australia, it seems that there are a number of lines all from the same heritage, from basic emigrants, the £10 pom, to convicts sent at her Majestys pleasure. We then found several new lines and they were added into the tree.

All that is except for one line that prove very difficult to link, Ian Scaysbrook from that line, made contact and we set about looking for the link, but no luck until a Ian decided to take the bull by the horns and went up to the Warwick records office to trawl the records, and found the link that we were looking for in the birthplace of Michael and two further generations, to link his line and ours together in the form of about 10 brothers and sisters. All of the info is now in the form of the Scaysbrook family tree.

Up to now, all Scaysbrooks that I have made contact with, are descended from a Thomas Scasbrick his name spelt many different ways, around the Scarsbrook or Scaysbrook Scarisbrick theme. We have no idea when or were he was born, but he was married to Jane ?, ca. 1599 in a village called Wotton near Oxford. For the next one hundred & fifty years we seem to have stayed much in the same locality, working as farm hands / carters, and in service to the local great houses and halls around Todenham Steeple Barton, Great Wolford, South Newington, Stroud, Hook Norton area, with the exception of one Michael Scaysbrook who was caught stealing in London and sentenced to death or transportation to the East coast of Australia. A more detailed desciption of our convict can be read by going to the scaysbrook.com web site. Another little incident, is the sacking of William Scaysbrook, who was working for the local land owner Sir Peter Pole, for being involved in the local Liberal movement.

As we go back we can see that the name Scaysbrook has many spellings from Scasbrook & Scarsbrook, to Skasbrik often for the same man, So far we have firm evidence of the existance of our line in the villages around Oxford, about the 1560 period. Did they come from the Liverpool area, certainly the name starts to crop up in many villages south, but as yet the period is very scarce of information. about this time,the name being spelt in many ways, but always recognisable, the local pronounsiation of Scarisbrick was, and still is Scaysbrick but we begin to see the two main lines I am logging, Scarsbrook and my line,Scaysbrook, settling down about the time of Michael. By the start of the 1900′s, a large portion of the remaining Scaysbrooks are on the move, some of the family went to Birmingham, it was the seat of the industrial revolution and provided an abundance of work, a small sect went to london, some went to the Leicestershire area, I think due to mining there, where one died in a quite horific accident, and some seem to have started traveling with a circus, come fairs, as carters. As far as the Birmingham group is concerned, again the family seems to split and several family groups emigrated to Australia.

On the Scaysbrook line, we are pretty sure on the links from Thomas Blake Scaysbrook (Scasbrook) up to present day, however we do not know for sure when he was born. The link is rather speculative, but links the only possible Thomas with the one who turns up in Hook Norton. Unfortunately there is some confusion as to whether the Thomas chosen actually died as an infant, we think not, as the burial entry just has a blank name, and ref to Henrys child ? however, at the moment this is as sure as we can be (maybe as sure as we will ever be). The merge includes some added info about the new Scarsbrook additions from the Oxford Parish Register transcriptions, and the many Scarsbrooks now making contact.

Its interesting to now see the way our name has evolved over the years from Scasbrook to Scarsbrook to Scaysbrook, even changing back to a previous spelling once or twice. If you have any info, or are one of the many variations on the name, make contact and let us know your line, if you see that you are not included, please contact us and we will correct this mishap.

The Australian line is quite interesting, Beth’s book descibes the basic line from the convict Michael, who married a local girl, another convict, and had 4 children one of which, was also called Michael, see the photo opposite, he also married, and had 15 children, this has byfar produced the largest Scaysbrook clan. thanks to Diana for the photo. A road has been named Scaysbrook which can be seen in the photo section. The Genealogy web site of Australia is a great place to start, follow the link and see what else you can find, new items are being added all the time.

Another excellent book by Sian Rees “The Floating Brothel” descibes the voyage to Australia, of many convicts, mostly females, in graphic detail, don’t be put of by the title, its a very good description of the life and early times of the Australian settlement.

The earliest name we have found dates to around 1560, if the line does decend from the liverpool area, what made them move south, the main civil war had yet to get going, Trade might have been the answer.

Well its been a while since I entered a post on this blog, I set it up for the CIAT President nominations, but thats al in the past, so what do I use this site for know, well the Konstrukshon Weblog site is my primary CPD site for the Architectural Technologist, so I will use this site to comment on any thing, body, item that I feel needs comment on.

So whats to say, well over the weeks I’ll comment on the news and perhaps no news items in the press, good internet items and above all the way the Mac is being developed.

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As always, I’m rushing to get things done before I go away on holiday, getting emails sent, drawings finished and meetings arranged for when I get back, unfortunately, I have just received my summons for the West Midlands regional October meet, this will be the last before Hong Kong, and would you believe it, I’m on holiday, so its a last minute phone call to offer apologies.

Its important to keep in touch with colleges and business friends, I do this by linking into whats now become to be know as social networking, but I just like to think that I anm keeping in touch, my good friend luigi, or is it Dave Traynor in Belfast, is an expert in this field, he may not know it, but he keeps a large band of Technologists, Architects and friends linked together by a constant stream of funny, some time near the knuckle jokes and film clips. and it occurred to me that, perhaps this is a problem when you become president, you disappear behind a veil of business that prevents contact with old friends, no more emails because your the president, ,,,,,,, Wrong, the moment your corraled behind the stone wall of office, then your out of the loop with the real world, so its a promise I make here and now, I will blog every day, whilst in office, I will continue to send Emails that might be construed as risky, but funny, I will continue to be Steve Scaysbrook, always available on phone,Email,voip, and most of all AVAILABLE