THE BAILEY LINE - BRIGSTOCK, ENGLAND
Community. Stewardship. Belonging.
Brigstock, Northamptonshire was home to my family for generations.
It is where my great-grandfather, John Elliott “Jack” Bailey, lived his entire life — observing, recording, tending, and caring for the land and the people around him.
He was the village historian, photographer, storyteller, and quiet guardian of its memory.
He documented what held rural life together:
traditions, relationships, fields, footpaths, customs, rituals, neighbourliness.
He also recorded what he saw slipping away.
“So many of the old ways have slipped away.
The fields have changed, the woods have thinned, and the sense of neighbourliness we once knew is fading.
It grieves me, not for myself, but for the generations to come.
For without care for the land and for each other, a village is only a place — not a community.”
And his final reflection — written decades before today’s societal fractures — ended with these words:
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new — And perhaps a little too swiftly for peace of mind and the pleasant harmonies of the rural scene.”
In his gentle way, he was naming the beginning of a much larger collapse:
• when community breaks, land breaks
• when land breaks, governance breaks
• when governance breaks, people fracture
The very themes I work with today — environmental integrity, truth in land and law, coherent governance — are the continuation of what he witnessed.
From him, I inherited:
• a deep sense of community
• the value of belonging
• the understanding that land holds memory
• the instinct to protect what is fragile
• the knowing that leadership is service
My great-grandfather, John Elliott Bailey, wrote about village life with clarity, humour,
and kindness. His writings live on in local archives and continue to be shared across Brigstock today.
THE ALFANO LINE — SAN CIPIRELLO, SICILY
Earth wisdom. Resilience. Connection to land.
From my mother’s side comes the Sicilian line — a lineage shaped by volcanic soil, mountain farming, and an ancient relationship with the land.
My grandfather, Girlando Alfano, was raised in humble conditions in San Cipirello, a village in the shadow of Mount Etna.
His family lived simply, growing food on steep slopes, collecting water from the land, learning from the elders, tending soil as though it were a living relative.
Their knowledge was not academic — it was inherited, embodied, intuitive.
They understood the land because the land was part of their life.
As a young man, my grandfather was taken as a prisoner of war to England. After the war ended, he chose love over returning home, and married my grandmother.
He built a life here — but brought Sicily with him.
He taught me:
• how soil remembers
• how to walk slowly with the Earth
• how food is grown, not bought
• how water is harvested, not wasted
• that life begins in the ground
Even decades later, at an allotment he tended, a patch is still known locally as “Alf’s Rhubarb"
And the great weeping willow that stands on land once farmed by him, is a living sentinel of his hands, his soil and his quiet devotion.
The fig tree in my garden is a descendant of his.
The rhubarb patch in my soil came from his allotment.
My grandfather worked the earth with mastery.
He grew food from seed with a wisdom beyond words.
From him I inherited ecological awareness, patience, and a love of natural systems.
JACK & GIRLANDO
WHERE THE TWO RIVERS MEET
where two ancestral landscapes form one coherent purpose
Between these two lineages — the green hills of England and the volcanic mountains of Sicily —
my life’s path found its shape.
I come from a lineage of makers, growers, storytellers, and truth-tellers.
My work is simply the continuation of theirs.
From the Baileys — English Craftsmen, Tailors & Writers
A family who crafted with their hands and spoke with their hearts:
- storytelling with observational precision
- community as belonging
- heritage as responsibility
- beauty as a way of seeing
- the ethics of place
- truth spoken plainly
- the instinct to protect what matters
Their gift to me was perception — the ability to see people clearly, kindly, and without hierarchy.
From the Alfanos — Sicilian Farmers Rooted in Land
A family shaped by volcanic soil, resilience, and the ancient rhythm of tending life:
- stewardship
- cultivation
- resilience in adversity
- nature as teacher
- soil as memory
- the understanding that life must be lived in balance
Their gift to me was earth wisdom — how to walk slowly, grow with intention, and treat the land as a living relative.
Together
These two lines formed the architecture beneath everything I create today.
My leadership models, governance frameworks, and integrity systems are not abstractions —
they are the living continuation of generations who understood craft, community, land, truth, and the responsibility of care.
VALUES
I was raised in a family where humility was wealth,
community was currency,
and beauty was something you learned to see — not something you owned.
The Baileys taught me to see people — truly see them — in all their humour, humanity, and individuality.
The Alfanos taught me the Earth — how to nourish, grow, tend, and care.
Together, they formed my earliest understanding that:
- difference is to be celebrated,
- belonging is a responsibility,
- and every person matters.
Hierarchy made no sense in the world I came from.
I learned instead that richness flows from character, contribution, and connection.
That beauty can be woven into anything —
a home, a garden, a story, a community.
And that the greatest act of leadership is not rising above others,
but bringing people back into wholeness.
This is the consciousness I inherited.
This is the consciousness I now teach.