This site is called Ringwood for two reasons. 

First and foremost, the Watsons and the Willsons came together in 1946 in the New Forest village of Ringwood, when my parents - both then serving in the RAF - married. My father was a Fen Country man and my mother a Maid of Kent.

Quite coincidentally, Ringwood also plays a part in the family tree of my ex-husband - and thus my son - whose forbears were Ringwood folk for generations.

As a peripatetic service family, we never had a "home". We moved on every two or three years, just like gipsies - sometimes home, sometimes abroad. I continued the lifestyle when I, too, married a serviceman. My maternal grandfather was serving in the Far East when WWII began, and his wife and children were evacuated to Australia. Many of them chose to stay, and built a new branch of the family.

Once I finally settled down in one place, it became important to find out where we came from. And this family tree, compiled over several years, with help from many "cousins", is the result. It represents my roots, and is what anchors me to my place in time and in history.

It is not finished - far from it. Genealogical research is the detective story that never ends....