A Family History · Rendered in Light
Eight thousand kin drawn out of a single GEDCOM file — every surname a colour of light, every life a star, every marriage a bridge across the dark.
Before you go in
Several lenses onto the same eight thousand people, and three rooms to read in. Nothing is lost by choosing wrongly — every view carries the whole tree.
Read, explore or immerse. Read the written narratives, explore the flat lenses in any browser, or immerse yourself in a headset.
Tap any card below. The first seven open in any browser, on a phone or at a desk. No sign-in, nothing to install.
Each lens has a search field. Type a surname, choose a name, and the view moves to them and holds them at the centre.
Select anyone to open their record — parents, children, dates, places — then step outward through their kin.
Three rooms to read in — the narratives, the searchable record, and the index of every surname.
The long-form narratives. How each line began, where it moved and what the parish books say — the Widdowsons out of Nottinghamshire, the Killers in the lead country, the Irish lines out of Kilkenny.
The quiet room. Search all 8,006 souls by name, open any record — parents, children, dates, places — and read the surname histories set beside the evidence they rest on.
All 1,281 surnames married into the tree, largest line first. Each name opens into its own solar system, so the index doubles as a way in.
Seven ways to see the same eight thousand people. Any browser, phone or desk.
All 8,006 souls as a living cosmos. Drift through the constellation, search for anyone, watch the lines bloom — then dive into any surname's solar system.
Step inside one surname's line. The founding ancestor burns at the centre; every soul is a star on a ring of time, families clustered as their own constellations.
Make anyone the trunk. Their lineage branches into light — ancestors above, descendants below, the paternal line a bright gold spine running through time.
Step through the family one person at a time. Centre on a relative and the view glides to them — parents, children, kin arranged around you, a breadcrumb trail behind.
A dark earth glowing with family light. 5,583 souls set at their birthplace — dense in the English Midlands, scattered to Kilkenny, Utah and New Zealand. Spin the globe, sweep the centuries, zoom to a single village.
Pick any two souls and see how the light connects them — cousins, great-aunts, shared grandparents — traced up the ladder to the ancestor where two lines become one.
Follow one great line downstream. Each surname runs as a river through five centuries — spellings braiding in, married-in lines colouring the water — with the Library essay reading alongside, year by year.
Two rooms built for a headset. Both open flat in a browser as a preview.
One session, four rooms: the earth as a lit globe, the tree of light stood up around you, the galaxy, and the archive. Lean in over the Midlands, then reach out and pull the generations apart.
A building raised from the record itself. Cross the rotunda into the Reading Room, the Arboretum or the Court of Evidence — or take the Holodeck, where the Vale of Belvoir is rebuilt around you in 1800.
What the record holds
Every figure below is read live from the file at the moment this page loads.
Colour is meaning
Each surname burns its own hue, and every spelling of a name is counted with it — Widdowson, Widdison, Wydowson and the rest are one line. A colour never decorates: it names a line of descent through the dark. Open any line to follow it downstream.
It began as a GEDCOM file — eight thousand names in plain text. Here it is something else: a planetarium of ancestors, where you can fall through the generations, anchor your own place, and walk the line back to the first traced light.
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