Readers of this website and the four published Charlie books will be well aware that Tom Idle is Charlie’s bosom pal.  When I started to research Charlie Chadwick’s genealogy over 10 years ago I was very successful in establishing his family background and that of his wife Margaret – referred to in all his writings as Jo and introduced to me after the war as Peggy.  I hope you are still with me !   Whenever I tried to research Tom Idle, I always drew a complete blank, as though he never existed.  Over this Easter weekend I have had a breakthrough.  I have found tucked away in Charlie’s logbook a brief reference to Charlie attending Tom’s wedding.  And Charlie had stayed overnight in Llangollen.

I then went investigating and eventually found a record of the marriage between Thomas Idle and Bronwen Meirion Williams which had taken place in a small village up the Dee valley near Llangollen, called Llantysilio, St Tysilio on the 28 September 1931.  Very tantalizing, but where do I go from here?  I cannot find (to date) any other references to the Idle family, or perhaps the arrival of little Idle’s, and I know that my genealogy research is of the very basic kind.  Tom Idle lived with his parents in the middle of Manchester, presumably until he got married, so my wife put to me that I should look there, but I cannot find anything, perhaps I am looking in the wrong place.  In those years Manchester was part of Lancashire, but obviously close to Cheshire as well.

Neither did we ever have Charlie refer to Tom’s occupation, so no clues there, but the possibility of a ‘City Lad’ settling in the Welsh Valleys is also unlikely, so I am a bit stumped now.  I would dearly like to trace any descendants of Thomas Idle and I know there are lots of amateur sleuths about who could perhaps have a quick way of tracing them.  I’d love to know.  Anyone wishing to pursue this appeal and wishing for more detail could contact me by email on:  david@thomas-itc.co.uk                     David Warner