This is my great-great-grandfather in the direct male line. In the late 1850s, he moved north to Peterborough and established himself as a watchmaker there. The family shop was by the Cathedral gates on Long Causeway. My great-uncle John Hubert Noakes sold it in the 1970s. George married Ellen Skellett and had five children by her. The youngest son was my great-great-grandfather George Robert Noakes (1877-1952). He took over the shop on his mother's death in 1895, at the age of eighteen and continued as a Clock and Watchsmith there until the 1920s. Swamped by cheap Swiss imports after 1920, he converted to a Jeweller. He married Elizabeth Bruster in 1905 and had two sons. The eldest was my grandfather, George Robert Noakes (1906-1990) who became a Public School Master at Giggleswick and Uppingham Schools. He wrote a series of textbooks for his subject in the 1950s, which were widely used in many schools. As he was otherwise engaged, his younger brother John took over the family business from their father, which he turned into a flourishing chain of Opticians, before retiring to Spain in about 1975.. My grandfather married Mary Tomkins in 1934, having three children. My father, William Robert Noakes (b.1944) is an Accountant and Sheep Farmer in Uppingham. I am the eldest of his five children.
Martin John Robert Noakes b.Leicester 1972