Hi again, Rosemary, Please rest assured, *Ould Woodhouse* is definitely what is written on that page. Forgive me for being pedantic for a second, but let me clarify; the *O* is not written awkwardly at all. A style of writing developed in the early to mid-1600s which is for us nowadays one of the most difficult to read. Handwriting changes almost as a *fashion*. Over the last hundred years we've moved from copperplate through *Marion Richardson* and the *Fair Italic* to . *anybody's guess*. And so it has always been. We can invariably tell without looking at the stamp when a handwritten letter arrives from the USA or from Germany or elsewhere - the handwriting just looks different. The writer was taught, usually as a child, a different style of letter forming. In this case, the age of the vicar would determine how the letters would be formed - in other words, as he was writing this in 1622, was he a young man writing a new form of the letter or an older man still using the older style? Facts like this can be valuable clues. The vicar tells us that the wife of Old Woodhouse has been buried. Checking quickly (i.e. not very thoroughly) through the Phillimore marriages in Dronfield, Edmunde's marriage to Alice LYNWOOD is recorded on 10 Oct 1585. This is the earliest possible marriage of four recorded between then and 1622. The others were of Richard [1600], Rodger [1604] and Edward [1615] WOODHOUSE. So it is likely that Edmunde may have been known locally as Old WOODHOUSE. But for good measure, three earlier marriages listed are Godfrey [1573], John [1571] and Thomas [1564]. So maybe OW may have been one of those! For you, it simply means a long trawl through the registers for the WOODHOUSE families to see what happened to them all in the hope you can form a complete jig-saw of them. Oh, my! One of the joys of Family History - or not? Good luck, Rosemary. Ruth