It is perhaps ironic that today, London's docklands retains pockets of its working class origins yet shares space with multi-million pound houses and penthouse apartments - the sort enjoyed by modern footballers...
The further back in time we travel into the Lampard family tree, the more it becomes clear that the ancestral roots lie outside London. Frank junior's three-times great grandfather, Henry Lampard, was born in 1816 in Rainham, Kent.
By the time that Henry's son (another Henry) was born in 1846, the family had moved to Shoreditch at a time when London's population began to soar and the suburbs began to expand.
Within a few decades of the Lampard's move, football began to catch on as a spectator sport amongst the burgeoning working classes, and the Football Association was duly formed to regulate the sport's development; the oldest cup competition in the world was born, and a century later a Lampard would lay his hands on the FA Cup.
One final footballing connection remains in the family, though; Frank's mother, Patricia Harris, has a sister, Sandra, who married the (now) Southampton manager, Harry Redknapp. Harry and Sandra's son, Jamie Redknapp, also plied his trade as a professional footballer and enjoyed spells at Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.
Football clearly runs in the blood, and perhaps in another twenty years we will look forward to the next generation of Lampard footballers.
