Former Perth journalist Amanda Platell grew up believing her ancestors were aristocratic Huguenot silversmiths until a chance discovery changed everything

For as long as I can remember, our story was that we Platells were descended from French aristocrats who had been forced to flee their homeland during a severe persecution of Huguenots in the late 17th century. They came to England, it was said, eventually settled in Kent and became distinguished silversmiths, making exquisite silverware, even for the royal family. On holiday last summer in Dinard, Brittany, with my good friend Simon Heffer, the author, and his family, I fancied I knew why I’d always felt so at home in France and told Simon, a little proudly perhaps, about my past. Ever the forensic historian, he asked for the few facts I actually knew about my family’s history, before his wife Diana and I headed off for a long swim in the sea. We had almost returned to the house when Simon stuck his head out of a window and said: “Mandy, darling, pour yourself a stiff gin and tonic. I have some news.” Using the names of my great-grandfather Isaac Platell, who settled in Perth, and his first surviving son, my grandfather Charles, he had spent several hours tracing my family’s history. The first discovery was that the Platells had come to England not from a chateau in France but a humble abode in Germany. My great-great-great-grandfather was a man by the name of Petrus Otto Platell, not an aristocrat but a modest tailor who died in his German homeland. Moreover, when Jacob reached British shores, it wasn’t Kent, the garden of England, in which he settled, married and raised his seven children, the eldest of whom was my great-grandfather Isaac. Home for the Platells was in what is today the inner-city area of Toxteth, Liverpool. Jacob lived and worked his entire life on Merseyside, toiling as a labourer on the docks and on steam dredgers. Finding out my lineage was traceable to Toxteth, a place I identified solely with the terrible race riots of 1981, came as a shock. So I’m a Scouser, I thought. Well, I’ve always loved The Beatles, the closest Liverpool gets to aristocracy. I can do a pretty good karaoke of Gerry And The Pacemakers’ Ferry Cross The Mersey and I know all the words to You’ll Never Walk Alone, but that’s the sum total of my Liverpool culture. A few months after my discovery, I received a box of possessions from the family home in Perth. Earlier this year, my beloved parents, Norma and Frank, died within minutes of each other, a month short of their platinum wedding anniversary. And though their passing, holding hands into the next life after a 70-year love affair, could not have been more perfect, the agony of losing them — and, by extension, a dwindling of my connection with the past — has been hard to bear. Strange things happen when your parents die. There is a burning need to keep your links to the past alive, to honour who you are. So when, on opening the box, I found a book my Aunty Charmian had compiled decades ago on our family tree, it was with a renewed sense of poignancy. Aunty Charm was an amateur genealogist and had already made a detailed family tree, tracing our family back to Hagen. But when she first presented her idea of the German Platells to us, we roundly dismissed her thesis, as it conflicted with our family’s preferred history. There was another reason for us rejecting her findings. According to Aunty Charm, there was a chance the Platells were descended from German Jews. In the ’60s and ’70s, Australia was dominantly, and somewhat arrogantly, white and Anglican. To our shame, none of us wanted to be seen as anything else. Not only that, but, having fought two bitter wars against Germany — 216,000 Australian husbands, sons and brothers were killed or wounded in World War I and 50,000 in World War II — no Aussie wanted to be associated with the “killer Krauts”. Yet research has proved the Platells were German Lutherans. So this month I decided to embark on my own genealogical journey, visiting Toxteth for the first time to retrace the footsteps of my great-great-grandfather and find where we Platells really came from. The first scrap of information I had to work from was that Jacob’s family had lived at 48 Harlow Street, a dingy cobbled road of small workers’ cottages, near the docks. Long gone now. Jacob moved to Liverpool in the 1860s and married Ann Davies in 1869, aged 33. They had seven children and probably shared the tiny terrace house with another family. From there I went to the Platells’ next Toxteth home, another worker’s cottage at 9 Lavrock Bank, also demolished and replaced by a ’60s terrace. Mary lives there with her son and her three-legged dog, Molly, and happily welcomed me in. I wanted to see if my great-grandfather, Isaac, had been able to see, from the back window, the River Mersey — and he could. I wandered the streets, where council housing has mostly replaced the tiny cottages, trying to visualise my great-grandfather growing up there. I guess they grew up quickly back then. As the eldest of seven siblings, he probably had to. After visiting Isaac’s family homes, my next stop was St Michael’s Anglican church, Toxteth Park, where his dad and mum became man and wife. It may be a poor parish but the church is majestic, the biggest iron-framed church in Liverpool. The vast East Window above the altar — installed in 1857, 12 years before Jacob and Ann took their vows — is as impressive as anything I’ve ever prayed beneath. And as I walked down the same aisle Jacob’s bride had once trodden, the sun came out, filling the nave with a kaleidoscope of colours. Was it that which made my eyes suddenly water? Or the thought of an innocent young bride marrying a poor labourer, not knowing she would have to work her fingers to the bone to keep her family alive? Two of her seven children died before the age of three, and she would face more heartache when her eldest son, Isaac, left for a new life in Australia, later followed by her second son. Jacob, Ann and three of their children were buried separately in unmarked paupers’ graves. Although Isaac may not have known what to expect when he arrived in Perth, WA, in 1881, surely the fear of poverty must have been foremost in his mind. In the only picture we have of him, he is standing beside his most prized possessions — his home and a water pump. Isaac’s home in the blistering Aussie heat was a “humpy”, a lean-to made of tree trunks supporting a roof of eucalyptus branches, with discarded corrugated tin sheets for walls. Yet there is no mistaking his pride. Isaac went on to marry Ellen and have five children. Only three survived childhood — my grandfather Charles (“Pop”), his brother Billy and sister Doris. Pop’s father died when he was nine, his mother soon after and the boys were placed in a brutal orphanage until the age of 14. Somehow he survived this and went on to marry my grandmother Gladys and raise five children. The first of them was my dad, Frank, whose 92 years of life generated more love, laughter and happiness than his father “Pop” could surely have ever dreamt of. Of course we were never aristocracy. We Platells are ordinary folk. But whether it’s the Mersey docks or the Aussie outback, our homes are still our castles.