Perhaps it is because of the rather southerly location of these twin major events and of course because of his long association with Oxford University that very few people associate Lewis Carroll, as he was to be known, with our Northern Counties.

Yet we can rightly claim that Lewis Carroll was a Northerner, descended from two ancient and distinguished northern families with long traditions of service to church and state. At the turn of this century a branch of his family still lived in Stubb Hall near Barnard Castle.

Certainly, as we shall surely show, a little village on the borders of County Durham and the North Riding of Yorkshire, was to play a most significant part in the life of this brilliant man who added to our literature the most delicious nonsense in the English language.

Lewis Carroll could, had he wished, have traced his ancestry back to the Conqueror's days when one of his forbears, Adam de Hoghton married Matilda, an illegitimate daughter of William 1. But it will be sufficient for our purposes if we look back some three centuries during which we hope, the northern identity of the Dodgson family may well be established.

Carroll's great-great grandfather, the Rev. Charles Dodgson held a living in Yorkshire in the early 18th century. His son, Charles, who also became a clergyman was for some time tutor to the son of the Duke of Northumberland. In 1762 he was presented with the living at Elsdon from which he moved to become the Bishop of Ossory and Ferns. Bishop Charles had four children, the eldest of which, another Charles became a Captain in the 4th Dragoon Gaurds. In December 1803 Captain Dodgson was brutally murdered in Ireland.

He left behind him a widow and two sons. The younger, Hassard became a famous lawyer and the eldest, again a Charles born in 1880 was to become the father of the creator of "Alice in Wonderland". Lewis Carroll's father was a distinguished scholar, taking a double first at Christ Church Oxford, being equally gifted in Mathematics and the Classics. In 1828 he married his cousin Frances Jane Lutwidge and went on to have eleven children, four boys and seven girls. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was the third child and the eldest boy.