Jason Plato goes back in time

When AUTOSPORT got together with Jason Plato for a trip into his past - tracing his ancestors for a feature that ran in AUTOSPORT last month - nobody could have predicted that we would uncover a connection that resonates so spectacularly with his brand-new British Touring Car Championship programme with MG.

There was only the smallest of inklings of any Plato connection with Abingdon, the town that would become synonymous with MG production, and which is still home to the marque's Car Club. In fact, as we would discover, the MGCC's headquarters even overlook the cemetery where Jason's great-great-great grandfather Henry Plato has been resting since 1883!

Jason's father Tim grew up in nearby Oxford, and as a young adult in the 1960s he and his group of friends would often pile into a car and head down to Abingdon - frustrated that the pubs in their home city closed early due to a curfew imposed on university students by the dons.

One night, after emerging from an Abingdon boozer, Tim's eye was caught by the name 'HG Plato' on the town war memorial. The following day he asked his mother Elsie Plato (born Holmes) whether she knew if this fallen soldier was a relative, and she replied that he was, but that she didn't know the exact relationship.

So that was the sum total of any Plato knowledge of any connection with Abingdon prior to our journey, during which we discovered that the family lived there for at least 100 years - from the 1810s to the 1910s...

Where did Plato acquire these front-wheel drive skills? © LAT

Jason was a fantastic subject for our story, a thinly-disguised attempt to replicate the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? series. With his amazing British Touring Car Championship record - two titles, 68 wins and counting - and his regular appearances as a TV presenter, first on Driven and then Fifth Gear he is the UK's most-recognisable and highest-profile star of domestic motorsport. And, of course, there's that surname...

Where do the Platos come from?

You may think that researching a rare name is easier than, say, tracing back a Smith or a Williams, but it's a mixed blessing. The census documents available online (taken every 10 years from 1841 to 1911) are all hand-written, and apart from 1911, when the householders completed the forms themselves, were filled in by enumerators who walked from door to door on the night in question.

When transcribed by the main websites ( www.ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk, which both work on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis), sometimes the old-fashioned handwriting can be mis-transcribed. It's obviously hard to mis-transcribe Smith or Williams, as the names are so common, but Plato is a different matter.

Also, sometimes the enumerator misheard the names, and many householders, with illiteracy so prevalent, would not have been able to check the spelling. For instance, Jason's Plato ancestors who were correctly spelt on the 1841 census became Plater in 1851, before reverting to Plato in 1861.

It's a similar story with the births, deaths and marriages registers, which became nationalised in 1837. Some of the Plato family's milestones, up to the 1850s, are misspelt as Plater here, but the evidence from other sources proves beyond doubt that the individuals concerned are Platos.

To go back beyond 1837, the most-used resource is the free site familysearch.org, which is a collection of pre-nationalised birth, death and marriage records from the individual parishes. But it isn't in any way exhaustive and the Abingdon St Helens parish - where the Platos lived, married and died - is not covered.

So we're already up against it...... Using census records, as well as the age given when he died in Abingdon Union Workhouse on November 5 1883, we know that Jason's 3x great-grandfather Henry Plato was born between 1800 and 1803. On the census records he claims to have been born in Portsmouth.

We have his marriage certificate from 1838, when as a widower he got hitched to Jason's 3x great-grandmother Charlotte in the village of Cumnor, just down the road from Abingdon. On the certificate it lists Henry's father's name: John Plato, so now we know who Jason's 4x great-grandfather is.

Every family tree has to start somewhere - even Plato's © LAT

But if we have any hope of going back further, we need to narrow down the period Henry could have arrived in Abingdon - we know already that it was before 1838, as this is when he married Charlotte.

The first clue is that living very close to Henry and Charlotte in both the 1841 and 1851 censuses is Mary Plato, who in '51 is aged 89 and listed as a pauper sackmaker. Her town of birth is given as Bromsgrove in Worcestershire. She seems likely to be Henry's mother, and therefore Jason's 4x great-grandmother.

When we order her death certificate, we find that she died on March 26 1857 of 'senile decay', and that she was the widow of John, a sack sower. Bingo: knowing that her husband was called John Plato, we now know that she indeed was Jason's 4x great-grandmother.

It's now time for a trip to the Berkshire Record Office: Abingdon only 'slipped' over the border into Oxfordshire in 1974, so the historical records for the town are held in Reading. Here we find the Abingdon St Helens files, which list Plato, Plater, Playter and even Pleator births, deaths and marriages - but all could well have been from the same variously-spelled family.

Here we discover that Jason's 4x great-grandfather John 'Plater' was buried in Abingdon in January 1825 at the age of 70. We also discover Jason's 3x great-grandfather Henry 'Plater' marrying his first wife, Mary Ann Drewett, in November 1823. Furthermore, a William Plato is listed as marrying in February 1817. It seems likely that William was Henry's brother.

So, with all this information, and knowing that Henry was born between 1800 and '03, it's clear that, even if he was born in Portsmouth, the family arrived in Abingdon during his childhood. And Portsmouth would have been a good immigration point for any Platos hailing from somewhere exotic such as Italy or France...

But as we head back further in the St Helens parish records, our nice trail of clues heads off in a different - and confusing - direction, doing a U-turn back from the English Channel and back to Abingdon...

We find a John 'Playter' born in April 1761. He's the son of Richard - a sack weaver - and Elizabeth. Bearing in mind the sackmaking occupation, it seems highly possible that here are some of Jason's ancestors in Abingdon - 40 years before Henry is supposed to have been born in Portsmouth.

Plato's ancestory keeps bringing him back to Abingdon... © LAT

So, are Richard and Elizabeth Jason's 5x great-grandparents? If so, then John would have been just 63 - and not 70 - when he died in 1825 (although the listing of ages is notoriously inaccurate during this period). It would also mean that he and his family would have had to travel south to Portsmouth for Henry to be born there, and then back again. And we can find no record of John's marriage to Bromsgrove lass Mary...

So what's the story? Well, perhaps the family did move from Abingdon to Portsmouth and back - indeed, there's not too much Plato 'activity' in the St Helens records in the first 15 years of the 1800s. Or perhaps Mary had a nomadic existence, moving from Bromsgrove to Portsmouth to Abingdon, giving birth to Henry along the way, then marrying John, who could have adopted Henry as his own son. Anyone familiar with Charles Dickens novels wouldn't rule that out.

Either way, we've come up against one of those brick walls so frustrating to genealogists, and at present have no way of tracing whether the surname is - as Jason and his family have always suspected - from continental Europe.

If this is a disappointment, then archived newspaper records provide much hilarity for Jason. This is where the Plato name is a blessing, as it's easy to find the mishaps and misadventures of his ancestors.

We detailed an 1862 fight between three of Jason's ancestors and an unfortunate son of a shepherd named John Leech in the AUTOSPORT magazine story, but there's more... In July 1830, there's a story in the Oxford Journal involving George Plato, who we believe is another brother of Jason's 3x great-grandfather Henry: "Two young men named Charles Buzzard and George Plato were brought before the magistrates for being beastly drunk and fighting early in the morning of Sunday last. They were both fined five shillings and in default of payment were committed to the stocks for one hour. Buzzard, having but one leg, excited a deal of amusement among the spectators, and caused the ebullition of a vast quantity of wit."

Beautifully archaic wording - and guffawing from the Plato family as they read this 181 years later!

Who was Jason's mystery great-grandfather?

As we wrote in the magazine, there is another - more recent - Plato mystery: the birth of Jason's grandfather Raymond Plato...

Raymond was born in Headington, Oxford in December 1914 to Edna Plato (Jason's great-grandmother), who was unmarried at the time - no father is listed on the birth certificate. Three years earlier, in 1911, Edna was working as a domestic servant in nearby Sutton Courtenay in the employ of an eminent Justice of the Peace, John Henry St Quintin Astell and Astell's two spinster sisters. Sutton Courtenay was a hub of high society at the time, and shortly after the 1911 census even Prime Minister Herbert Asquith moved there.

...the spiritual home of MG - the manufacturer for which he now drives

Meanwhile, Edna's brother Henry George Plato is listed on the 1911 census as living in Abingdon with his mother Emily (Jason's 2x great-grandmother). Five years later, HG Plato would be killed in the Battle of the Somme, and later commemorated on Abingdon War Memorial. Half a century later, his name would be spotted by a young Tim Plato as he emerged from a pub...

So where in 1911 was Jason's 2x great-grandfather Henry? Answer: living on his own in New Street, Abingdon, separated from his wife.

The intrigue now for Jason is: who was Raymond's father, his own great-grandfather? He'd love to know, and fondly remembers Raymond - who rode in motorcycle trails - as taking a keen interest in the chain technology on his kart. Is there a clue in his Christian name? The Platos, like most families, tended to name their children after themselves, grandparents or uncles and aunts. And Raymond's twin brother Ernest Henry Plato, who died at the age of two, was named after Edna's two brothers.

There was no Raymond already in the Plato family, so could this be the name of the absent father? There was a Raymond who was the son of one of the high society of Sutton Courtenay, and was also killed in the war in 1916... But now we're in the realms of conjecture, and besides, Jason and his father Tim have heard a story that their mystery ancestor may have been an Australian soldier.

Plato's Chinese laundry

We now visit the Oxfordshire History Centre in Cowley to get more information on what happened to the Platos after the war. We already have Edna's marriage certificate, to a Chinese laundry proprietor named Chow Coon in 1920, when her address is listed as 14 York Place, St Clements, Oxford.

In the OHC archives we discover Emily Plato, Jason's 2x great-grandmother, being buried at Oxford's Rose Hill Cemetery in December 1924. Her address is listed as 14 York Place, so clearly her daughter and Chinese son-in-law looked after her in old age. Enigmatically, she is described as a widow - especially as her husband Henry did not die, aged 80, until December 1926!

His final years were spent in Headington's Hill House, which it turns out was the new name for the modernised workhouse. Despite his estrangement from Emily, he had obviously moved from Abingdon to Oxford, most likely so that his daughter Edna could take at least some care over him. He is also buried in Rose Hill Cemetery.

If you've read the magazine feature, you'll know that Edna was the true matriarch of the Platos, and these details confirm further that she must have been a remarkable hinge of the family.

The family tree is taking shape nicely by now, but there are still gaps © LAT

Raymond Plato would end up marrying Elsie Holmes - Jason's grandmother. She was born in Eccleston, Lancashire, to Joseph and Ada (nee Wilding). Like his son-in-law Raymond, Joseph Holmes was an engineer. But, says Tim Plato, "he was a bit of a geezer - into pubs and clubs too". The Holmes family appear to have been successful farmers, to the extent that the widowed John Holmes, Jason's 3x great-grandfather, was able to remarry at age 70 to a lady in her forties, a discovery that prompts a proud chortle from JP.

The Holmes clan, and many of the other families that provide Jason's ancestors on this side of his family tree, were predominantly cotton weavers in Lancashire, but during the 1860s many of them became farmers. This was when the cotton industry went into serious decline, caused predominantly by the halting of imports of the raw material as a result of the American Civil War.

On the Wilding side we discover another newspaper story, relating to the unfortunate demise of Jason's 3x great-grandfather Joseph Wilding on October 15 1877. Preston Guardian reported: "SHOCKING RAILWAY ACCIDENT - On Monday morning, Joseph Wilding a farm labourer, aged 67, while attempting to cross the line near to the level crossing in Leyland, was caught by the engine of an express train and hurled dead on to the embankment. The train was within a few yards of the deceased before the driver saw him crossing, and he reversed the engine instantly, but was unable to prevent the accident."

Jason shakes his head, tries to work out how his ancestor could not have heard the approaching train, and concludes: "He must have been drunk!"

We now move onto Jason's mother's side: Linda Scott - although born in Oxford - is almost completely from north-eastern stock. In the magazine we covered her close kinship, through her aunt, to comedy giants James Casey Jr and Jimmy James. In common with Casey, Jason and Linda are descended from Philip Darby, a wire worker from Middlesbrough, and here is another tangled thread to unravel...

Philip, Jason's great-grandfather, was actually born Philip Burden in 1870, but very soon afterwards the family, newly-arrived in the north-east after moving from Sedgley in the West Midlands, resurrected the name Darby.

From zoning in on discussions between other descendants of this family on genealogy forums, it appears that Jason's 4x great-grandfather John Darby never married his common-law wife, Catherine Burden. This is likely because Jason's Darby ancestors were Quakers (and, later, Methodists) - and we know this because, as we discovered, he is from the same family as the famous 'godfather' of the Industrial Revolution, Abraham Darby. A marriage with a Church of England girl may have been frowned upon on either side, so the next three generations on from John Darby were named maternally as Burden.

Tim Plato has been a constant prescence at his son's races during his career © LAT

Here we find another newspaper story, detailing the tragic end of Jason's 3x great-grandmother Harriet Burden. The Birmingham Daily Post of February 27, 1860 reports: "A woman named Harriet Burden, while in the business of 'making the house tidy', turned her back in such close proximity to the fire as to allow her gown to catch fire. She screamed for assistance, and her daughter ran downstairs, and made every effort to extinguish the flames, but she did not succeed until her mother was badly burnt. The poor woman died the same day."

Tragic - but in Victorian times it was important that life went on, and young widows and widowers usually remarried, as did Jason's 3x great-grandfather William Burden. He also did well out of the legacy of his father, John Darby; we know this because we are able to obtain a copy of the will of Jason's 4x great-grandfather - another occasionally illuminating resource for genealogists.

Winning - With a pig!

While the Darbys were moving from the West Midlands to the north-east, Jason's Scott ancestors lived in the North Pennines village of Middleton-in-Teesdale during Victorian times. Again we find great detail from local newspapers to provide the shades of colour between the cold black-and-white facts. Middleton was lead-mining country, and it appears that most of the houses were built by the London Lead Company for its workers there.

Invariably prefixed "the pretty little town of..." in local reports, Middleton appears to have had a strong tradition of workers fighting for their rights, and Jason's 3x great-grandfather Jacob Bainbridge Nixon was among strike organisers in 1872. Bainbridge was the maiden name of Jason's 4x great-grandmother 'Nanny', who was born in 1802, and was also the middle name of Jason's great-grandfather Wilfred Bainbridge Scott, who Jason recalls as a young lad: "I remember standing at the bottom of the stairs, and he'd chuck Werther's Originals down to me!"

Jacob Bainbridge Nixon also crops up in another local newspaper story, for a much more whimsical reason. The September 7, 1878 edition of the Northern Echo ;reads: "The pretty little town [that phrase again] of Middleton-in-Teesdale was yesterday en fete on the occasion of the annual shows of the local agricultural and poultry societies and the continuation of a fancy bazaar in aid of the fund for the rebuilding of the Middleton Parish Church. The weather was beautifully fine, and there was a large attendance of visitors, not only from all parts of the dale, but from Barnard Castle, Darlington, and other distant places..." The story ends with the results, with first place in the Cottager's Pig contest being presented to Jacob Nixon, of Middleton-in-Teesdale!

Whether the competitive instincts of Mr Nixon (or even his pig) were a template for the fanatical drive and determination to succeed of one of his descendants is a moot point. But it's interesting to consider the role his genes played: as a 3x great-grandparent, he contributes 1/32 to the man we now know as Jason Plato. So too do the other 3x great-grandparents we've discovered: Henry Plato Sr, Charlotte Alder, George Blake, Jane Blake, John Holmes, Nancy Crook, Joseph Wilding, Margaret Iddon, Samuel Parker, Jane Wilson, John Scott, Mary Wearmouth, Mary Longstaff, Charles Walls, Elizabeth Towlard, William Ogilvie, Ann Burton, William Darby/Burden, Harriet Wilkinson, Joseph Clark, Elizabeth Lloyd, William Wilde, Frances Pringle, and finally a Welsh couple named Thomas Jenkins and Sarah Jones.

What role did each of them play? Whose characteristics came to the fore in subsequent generations and whose went dormant? Which of those Georgians and Victorians would have been handy behind the wheel of a touring car, had they been born in the past half a century?

These are never-ending questions, but half the fun is knowing that somewhere could be a document that gives you a tantalising clue to your identity; the other half wondering if, maybe, a 3x great-grandchild of Jason's will open up a long-locked-away treasure chest of information about their racing ancestor. You never know, they may even be driving an MG.