EastEnders' Rose Ayling-Ellis finds pub landlady like Peggy Mitchell in family tree

Rose Ayling-Ellis discovered her three-times great-grandmother Agnes ran a boozer with an iron fist, throwing out drunks and even slapping one punter’s face on a recent episode of BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?

She once chucked a drink over someone in The Queen Vic while playing Frankie in EastEnders. So it is fitting that actress Rose Ayling-Ellis discovered a real-life formidable pub landlady in her family tree.

Like Peggy Mitchell, her three-times great-grandmother Agnes ran a boozer with an iron fist, throwing out drunks and even slapping one punter’s face. Rose, 29, who traced her family connections on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, says: “It’s like EastEnders. I chucked a drink in someone’s face, so I feel like it’s in my blood.”

The actor, presenter and deaf rights campaigner, who shot to fame on the soap and won Strictly in 2021, went back five generations in the ancestry show. Rose, who grew up in Hythe on the Kent coast with her single mum Donna Ayling and brother Jacob, went to Birmingham to find out more about an heirloom photo her mum had.

Rose discovered the woman in it was her ancestor Agnes Chilton, who ran the Sandy Hill Tavern in the 1880s. Donna said: “Apparently she used to kick out all the drunk men. I think they were quite frightened of her and she didn’t take any nonsense.” After her first husband Alfred died, aged 48, mum-of-six Agnes married Thomas Harris in 1904 and ran the Aston Tavern near Aston Villa FC – who Rose’s family has always supported.

Following Thomas’s death, Agnes used the £1,500 she inherited to extend the premises further. An emotional Rose was impressed, saying: “She’s sociable, she’s a feminist, she’s a businesswoman. She had a lot going on but she did it all. I have nothing but massive respect for her.”

On her dad Ben Ellis’s side, Rose found out her great-great-grandad James Welland, a railway worker, lost his hand aged 19 when he was run over by a goods train in Tiverton in 1899. His claim for compensation failed, and he and wife Ada, who had 17 children, were forced into destitution, living in a squat in Exeter, Devon. Rose, who has been deaf since birth, said: “It has made me realise that I’ve got a disabled person in my family.

“It’s made me think about what it was like for him, because at 19 years old to go to work, feel like you’ve got a great job and then suddenly to lose your hand… how did he cope with that?” Going further back, she also discovered her four-times great-grandfather Pasquel, born in Italy, would walk 20 miles a day selling jewellery in South Molton, Devon, in the 1840s. Rose says: “When you hear the family stories, it makes them all very real, very human. It inspires me, hoping that my story will be incredible for whoever is in my family tree, for the future.”

Who Do You Think You Are? is on BBC1 on Thursdays at 9pm and iPlayer