My incredible FAMILY TREE

Digging deep into history, one woman has discovered thousands of ancestors

- SARAH WHITELEY

Over recent years, tracing family trees has become increasingly popular, and with the advent of the internet and websites like ancestory.co.uk and myheritage.com, it is easier than ever to find out about your family's past.

Yet few people will get as far as Caroline Cox - she has identified a staggering 5,000 direct and distant relatives.

'I never thought, when I started this, I'd be where I am now,' Caroline, 57, from Nottingham, laughs. 'But I find it fascinating.

I love discovering connections to people from the past.' Caroline's love of history began when she was a teen and, as part of a school report, spoke to her grandparents about living through the Blitz.

'They were in Nottingham, so they weren't bombed regularly and my grandfather was in the Navy, so he often wasn't there,' Caroline explains 'But I was really interested to hear about what life was like then.' She also began writing to her great-aunt, who had emigrated to Australia in the 1960s.

Following her passion, she started studying history at A level, but left once she met her husband Antony, now 61, at the age of 16. The pair went on to have two children - Mark in 1989, and Laura in 1993 and Caroline devoted herself to raising them.

Yet her interest was piqued again when her grandmother Irene showed her a photo of her grandfather - Caroline's great-great-grandfather - with his family and wrote all of their names on the back. Caroline was so interested that when Irene died in 2000, and her husband a few months later, she was given the family albums.