Boris and Corbyn were close... 170 years ago! Leaders’ ancestors lived next door

‘It seems incredible’

THEY say you should keep your friends close... and your enemies even closer.

But even sworn foes Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are unlikely to have known that their families were once next-door neighbours – albeit a long time ago.

Whether they were friends, acquaintances or couldn’t stand the sight of each other in Masham – the small Yorkshire market town where they lived in the 19th century – is not recorded, however.

Amateur genealogist Denny Gibson discovered the connection by chance after reading that Boris Johnson had a Yorkshire Dales link going back generations and Mr Corbyn was descended from a North Yorkshire saddler.

Some 170 years ago when a young Queen Victoria was on the throne, Mr Corbyn’s great-great-grandfather, Thomas Stott, lived next to Mary Raper, an ancestor by marriage of Mr Johnson’s.

The fascinating research, using information from the national census, has revealed the families would have known each other very well for at least 20 years.

Speaking of Mr Corbyn, Mrs Gibson said: ‘I researched his ancestry and was surprised to find that it traced back to Masham and that his ancestors were there, in the very same era, as Boris Johnson’s ancestors, both running businesses in close proximity.’

Mr Stott, a saddler, harness maker and twice-married fatherof-seven, lived in Market Place – and next door was confectioner Mrs Raper. The widow, whose maiden name was Jackson, was sister- in- law to another Mary Raper who wed the Prime Minister’s great-great-great grandfather Thomas John Johnson.

Both were large families that had been in the area for generations. The two families were certainly neighbours from before the census of 1851, and still lived next to each other when Mr Stott’s second wife Sarah died in 1871.

Mrs Gibson, of Crakenhall, North Yorkshire, said: ‘They would be well known to each other. It seems incredible that two political giants should have ancestors living close in the same era.’

Both properties are still there today, although they are no longer businesses, she added.