BRÍOGH · OUR STORY
Why do the people we love become harder to reach the further back we look?
Martin · Founder, Siorai Labs
THE FOUNDER
My name is Martin. What began as curiosity about my own family — who they were, where they came from, the lives they led — grew over decades into something much larger. I wanted to understand not just my ancestors, but the places they lived, the communities they were part of, the people they knew. The neighbours who witnessed their marriages. The friends who stood godfather to their children. The slow, intricate web of connections that makes a life in a particular place at a particular time real and human.
Over the years, I learned to build websites so that others could share in what I was discovering. First mosleyfamilies.net — my own family’s story. Then derbyshirehills.com — a nod to my mother’s family name, and to the landscape that shaped them. Then bramptonoldandnew.com — a community history project tracing centuries of life in a small English market town through its parish registers, newspaper archives, wills, and census returns.
All of it built during a career in public service, in the hours that passion carves out of a busy life. And all of it running into the same wall. The research was endlessly absorbing. But the tools were always the obstacle. Everything required manual data entry. Every connection had to be made by hand. Every document had to be transcribed before a single piece of information could be used.
In retirement, I finally had the time to do something about it. So I built the tools I’d always needed.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
It is about the relationship between the past and the present moment. The moment you walk down the street your great-grandmother walked. The moment you find a photograph you’ve never seen and recognise a face. The moment a child asks who someone was and you realise you know the answer.
We are not building a memorial platform. We are building something that keeps people present — not as data, not as records, but as living, feeling human beings whose stories deserve to be carried forward.
Bríogh is Gaelic for living soul. The name is not a metaphor. It is a commitment.
WHERE IT BEGAN
The first memorial we built was for Robert Falcon Scott — the Antarctic explorer who died returning from the South Pole in 1912. We wrote his story in plain English. Fisceal read it, extracted the names, dates, places and relationships, and created a beautiful memorial and a complete Webtrees family tree — automatically, in minutes.
That moment — watching a story become a memorial and a family tree simultaneously, with research hints pointing toward further discoveries — was when we knew this was real.
WHAT WE’RE BUILDING
Beautiful digital memorials created from a single story. Free forever. The heart of everything we build.
Walk where your ancestors walked. Location-aware heritage discovery on iOS and Android — powered by your Bríogh family tree.
The intelligence engine that reads a story and generates a memorial, a family tree, and research hints automatically. One input. Multiple outputs.
The company behind all of it. One founder, a clear vision, and a commitment to building something worth keeping — and worth passing on.
Chan eil iad air falbh uainn, ach air falbh romhainn.
They are not gone from us, but gone before us.
It takes minutes. It lasts forever.