A total of 15 separate families - around 50 people - arrived, including some from USA and the Isle of Wight.

The family stems from one couple who married in Sarratt Church in 1769.

A descendant, through the female line, is John Hopkins, who organised the event on Saturday, July 19.

He still lives locally at Beckley, Langley Road, Chipperfield.

He is not sure where the original couple came from -perhaps from Aston Abbots - but, he says, the Curd name is more common in the South East around, Surrey, Kent and Sussex than around here.

The descendants met at Sarratt village school where John had a display of family items.

The youngest member at the gathering was eight-year-old Louis Curd, who lives in Chipperfield and is the 10th generation of the family.

Many of those who attended had never met before - although some had been in touch with each other through email.

It was Brian Curd, from the Isle of Wight, who first set up a family website relating to the name Curd and he was able to contact most of the people who came along.

Now there may be further regular reunions in the future.

Amongst the visitors was a representative from the One Name Study Group (which takes a particular surname and researches it).

Now DNA samples are being taken from various branches to see if connections can be made with the south-east and whether research can take the family name back even further than 1769.

John Hopkins is researching his family tree and still lives in the family home into which his great grandmother Lucy Curd moved in 1925, to live with her daughter Minnie and son-in-law George Hopkins, a farm labourer.

The house was named Beckley after Lucy. She died in 1934, aged 86.

Lucy was a strong character - widowed when her husband James was killed in 1881, she had five young children and was pregnant with the sixth, but somehow managed to keep the family together.

By 1891 he has discovered Lucy was a charwoman living on The Common, Chipperfield (probably Queen Street) with her daughter Alice, 18, a laundress, sons George, 16, a farm labourer and Herbert, 13, an errand boy and daughters Minnie, 10, and Bertha, nine, both at school.