Among the items I inherited from my grandma was a jug made of gun metal with the inscription

1st Prize
Bicycle Race
Woodsome
August 15th 1877

I knew it had been won by one of my great-grandma’s brothers, Joe. I think, from the date, he must have been riding a penny-farthing bike. Knowing he had lived in Dewsbury, I pored over maps to try to find the village of Woodsome (this was in the days before you could simply google such things), but to no avail.

It remained a mystery until some visitors to my house noticed the jug on display and I commented that I had not found out where the village of Woodsome was. They laughed and said “that’s because it’s not the name of a village, but of a house!” It turned out that it’s a big country house near Huddersfield and they knew it because they had played on the golf course there.

So, one mystery was solved, but the second one is: what became of Joe? He emigrated to Australia, but the family never heard from him again, despite spending quite a lot of money trying to find out what had happened to him.