After Delyth spent a few days researching the family tree and coming up with lots of names, dates, births,deaths and marriages, my sister and myself decided to spend a weekend away somewhere following up one line of the tree to try and make sense of all the info.
The easiest place to start seemed to be on my mother's father's side of the family as we had a pretty unbroken line going back to 1625.
The two relatives we were going to concentrate on were my 4x great grandfather, James De La Field Phelps, and his son William John Phelps.
Thanks to Del's research we knew that James Phelps had been the rector of St Kenelms church in Alderley, Gloucester, and his son had been the High Seriff of Gloucestershire and had lived in a house called Chestal House in Dursley.

This is the family line we were following, showing the direct link from my grandparents back to 1711, with James and his son William marked with red asterisks.

Our first port of call was Dursley, where we had intended to have a brief look at Chestal house, which we had found on Google Maps, then drive on to the church in Alderley.
We walked through a village lane to where we thought the house was and came across this lovely little house

We thought this must be it, and were about to turn back when a van approached with the windows wound down so I asked the driver if it was Chestal House. He said no, it was just the lodge, and to see the house we had to continue walking up the road.
As we approached the house it was clear that it was a very impressive building, set in beautifully kept grounds. There was a sign saying private property but we  walked up to it anyway, and I decided to be brave and knock the door to ask if I could take a few photos of the outside of the house to show the family when we got back.
The door was opened by a middle aged lady who didn't look too happy to have me take any photos, but when we mentioned that our ancestor had been the High Sheriff she was very interested and said she had been too, around 10 years previously. She invited us in for a chat and to ask about our relative.
When we said his name was Phelps she told us that she had bought the house from the Phelps family trust.
She knew quite a bit about the family that we didn't know, for instance that William Phelps had had the house built for him by Vulliamy
She also told us that there was a Plaque to the Phelps family in the church in Dursley, which we wouldn't have visited if she hadn't told us.
She was happy to show us the outside of the house and for me to take a few photos as long as I didn't make them public, but didn't want me to take any of the inside, which was a shame, it was beautiful.
From there we strolled in to Dursley and had a look around St James's church.

These were the plaques we found inside the church

From there we headed to Alderley, to find St Kenelm's church to try to find the grave of the Rector, James De La Field Phelps. The Ancestry.com site said that he was buried inside the church, but though we found this plaque there was no sign of a tomb inside.

We wandered around the graveyard for a while without seeing anything, everything was very old and worn, but then Glynis managed to make out part of the inscription on this grave, which was enclosed by railings attatched to the church wall

The inscription is almost impossible to make out on the photos, but it was definitely In Loving Memory of the rector James De La Field Phelps, giving his date of death as 1847, There was also mention of a daughter but we couldn't make that out.
There were also graves with the name Blagden Hale on them, but it wasn't until we got to the guest house and had a look at the family tree again that we realised they had also be ancestors of ours.

So all in all it was a very exciting day. Next time we'll try a different branch perhaps. Or maybe try to find out where it all went wrong for this one, High Sheriff of Gloucestershire with a large country house and grounds to terraced houses in the Rhondda, in a few generations :)