Several years ago I visited the hallowed ground of Davenport, the place where the first identifiable Davenport lived, Ormus de Dauneporte the patriarch of Davenports everywhere. To get to it I had to park alongside the busy Holmes Chapel to Congleton road near to a farm called Grange Farm. From here you can walk down a lane signposted Swettenham, past renovated rural cottage now owned by the wealthy. Once you have come to the end of the tidy tarmaced lane and have gone through a rustic gate you are in unspoilt countryside which must contain many remains of the busy township Davenport, which it was many centuries ago. As you go down a steep path beyond the rustic gate, on one side you have the flood plain of the River Dane from which the name Davenport derives( Dauen-port "the town on the trickling stream") and on the other, Davenport Hall Farm perched on a steep sided promontory above the river which today is peaceful and meandering, flowing sluggishly during the Summer months! , a haven for a multitude of wild life. It was on this promontory that Ormus built his homestead, although we have no clues to say what it was like it must have been quite different from the ornate half timbered houses later Davenports built. Some say that Davenport Hall Farm contains remnants of a much earlier building, a manor house maybe, though I have not been privileged to view its interior. The path continues through water meadows and small thickets to the village of Swettenham a place where some Davenports of the 16th and 17th centuries are buried according to the parish registers. It was with a sense of pilgrimage that I spent that warm and sunny early spring day earnestly seeking to receive the vibrations of earlier times as I walked along. Source material which deals with the early Davenports is sometime contradictory. The researcher is often left to trust his or her gut feeling about what evidence is likely to have integrity. This is of course true of all historical research. When I was at school we were taught that the Vikings did nothing but rape and pillage this country of ours. Today we have to be more circumspect for extensive excavations in York have demonstrated what a homely and civilised people the Vikings were when they had settle there. A twelfth century chronicle suggests that Davenport was an important place in the year 920 AD and was therefore probably so before this. Its importance seems to have stemmed from the defensive position the promontory and the narrow valley through which the River Dane flows provided in protecting the kingdom of Mercia from raiders across the Cheshire Plain. Sources suggest that the township may have been founded by Scandinavian merchants but was in existence well over ! a century before the Norman Conquest. In the time of Doomsday Davenport was held by a Gilbert de Venables and was worth three shilling but was mostly wasteland probably meaning that it was wild and wooded and uncultivated. Clearly Davenport was not owned by the Davenports from the time of the Norman Conquest although this was once what I believed. I always believe too that the first Davenports came across with William the Conqueror from Normandy and settled in this country. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that Ormus was alive at a time of the Norman Conquest and certainly none to suggest that he had Norman blood in his veins. What a devastating realisation this was for me! Source material suggests that it is much more likely that Ormus had Scandinavian or English ancestry. All that we can be reasonably be certain of is that Ormus de Dauneporte or Orme de Davenport was living in the twelfth century and probably before 1154. It is also likely that Ormus followed the cu! stom of the time taking the name of the place where he live "of Davenport" and incorporated it into his name. My mother was a Davenport (Phyllis). It is her that I blame in the nicest possible way for my obsession with the Davenports!! Leon Knapper