The Wreford Line: A Family Tie to Peter Cook
Family history throws up all sorts of things once you follow a line back far enough, and this is one of the more surprising ones I've come across: my family and the comedian Peter Cook share a common ancestor. We're fifth cousins, three times removed — a distant relationship, but a genuine one, tracing back to a Devon couple, Matthew Wreford (bef.1712–1752) and Sarah (James) Wreford (bef.1717–bef.1763), who sit as our shared great-grandparents, x4 great for Peter and x7 great for me.
How the line runs down to Peter Cook
Sarah and Matthew's son Matthew Wreford (bef.1741–bef.1821)
his son George Wreford (bef.1774–1858)
his son Thomas Wreford (bef.1822–1904)
his daughter Minnie Jane (Wreford) Cook (abt.1869–abt.1957)
her son Alexander Edward "Alec" Cook (1906–1984)
and his son, Peter Edward Cook (1937–1995)
That last link checks out against Peter Cook's published biography, which records him as the eldest son of Alexander Edward "Alec" Cook, a colonial civil servant — matching birth and death years and all. It's a good sign when an independent source confirms a step in the tree like that.
How the line runs down to me
My own branch splits off earlier, through a different son of Sarah and Matthew's: down via Robert Wreford, another Robert Wreford, George Giles Wreford, and Fanny (Wreford) Longstaff, into the Longstaff and Robinson families. WikiTree keeps the most recent generations private, but both branches converge on the same eighteenth-century couple.
Who Peter Cook was
Peter Cook co-wrote and performed in Beyond the Fringe, the 1960 stage revue that also launched Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore, and later became proprietor of the satirical magazine Private Eye. He's widely regarded as a founding figure of British satire, and in a 2005 poll of comedians and comedy professionals, he was voted the greatest British comedian of all time.
Beyond the double act's stage work, Cook and Dudley Moore went on to make the BBC series Not Only... But Also through the mid-to-late 1960s, and the pair starred together in the 1967 film Bedazzled, a comic retelling of the Faust legend with Cook playing the Devil. Later in his career he also had a memorable small role as the Impressive Clergyman in The Princess Bride (1987), and recorded the notorious Derek and Clive albums with Moore — material that's about as far from polite as British comedy gets.
He also made a one-off appearance on the British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? — a show quite a few of us had on regularly in the 1990s — turning up in the very first series alongside Stephen Fry, Josie Lawrence and John Sessions, under Clive Anderson's chairmanship.
Local connections
I looked for a North East England link, and didn't find one — Cook was born in Torquay, and nothing in the record ties him to the Wrefords who headed north. There is a real Edinburgh connection, though: Beyond the Fringe had its debut performance on 22 August 1960 at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, before transferring to London and eventually Broadway. It's usually credited as the starting point of the whole 1960s British satire boom — and Edinburgh is a city I know well, having spent a good many years there myself.
The upshot
Fifth cousins three times removed is about as far apart as family gets, but the records back the connection up all the way. Sometimes that's exactly what family history is for — finding the unexpected names hiding a few branches over.
