This morning we headed straight to the Records Office in Newport. We spent two hours inside tracing records. There are soooo many Jacobs! And soooo many William Jacobs! The original documents were too frail to view, but we were able to get copies off a microfiche film. We put them all onto a CD to take home and print.

Then we went to Shalfleet to find the church that Isaac and Elizabeth were married in. Fortunately it was easily found. We went inside this magnificent medieval church. It is beautiful, and the walls are 5 feet thick in parts. It has a square tower that was built in 1070. The rest is late 13th Century work. The parishioners sit in stalls, and we wonder which belonged to the Jacobs family. Outside we found graves belonging to Fanny Jacobs and William Jacob.

We drove on to Calbourne, where Henry Jacobs (Isaac's father) is supposed to be buried. It is another beautiful church, but unfortunately we couldn't find his grave.

Then we drove to Quarr Abbey. We had afternoon tea on the lawn in the sunshine - such a lovely thing to be able to do after all the cold and rain. We walked down the lane to the old abbey that lies in ruins. We walked over the site that our forebears had given money to build through the gift of a messuage (house and buildings) in 1259. I knocked on the door and found George, who lives in the house adjacent to the site. George had been very interested in the history of the Jacobs family when Merady, Neil and Alexander had visited two years ago. He showed us some photos from when they had excavated the site. There was a photo of the remains of the original abbott. The site was covered over again after excavation as this is felt to be the best way of preserving it. The site is huge, and has views across the Solent to Portsmouth.

We were a group of tired little travellers as we made our way back to Whitwell. Having missed the dinner hour, as a treat we went straight to the White Horse Inn and had dessert. It was 7:45pm and it had been a very long day!