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Update on my 'both sides' match reported above: Peter agreed that I should give up on this one, but after getting more shared matches on Ancestry, and more recently MyHeritage, to documented 3rd cousins of mine, I decided to pursue this by contacting the manager of my 'mystery' DNA match, and I'm really glad I did, as it has knocked down a longstanding brick wall for both of us!

Basically, the aunt's test is managed by her niece (the aunt having sadly passed away) who turned out to be a very keen family historian in Australia who had been trying to trace the origins of her English-born ancestor (WP) for ages. The earliest record she had of this ancestor was his marriage in Sydney in 1840. The reason I hadn't found any surname matches in the aunt's tree was because he had significantly changed the spelling of his name, but his original surname was the same as my 3x great-grandmother, one of my longstanding brick walls. According to censuses she had been born in Braintree, Essex in about 1801, but despite scouring the Essex records I had been unable to trace her baptism. I only knew her maiden name via the birth certificate of her youngest child born in 1840. The first record I had of her was the baptism of her eldest child in London in 1827 - I couldn't even find her marriage record (and still can't).

So... my Australian contact and I both thought there must be a connection between her ancestor and mine - we just had to find out what. As a result of our lengthy and ongoing collaboration on this problem we have discovered that WP was almost certainly baptised in London in 1815 to parents from Braintree, and that my ancestor was baptised at the age of 24 in London (her date of birth on the baptism record fitting exactly with her age on censuses) and her parents were WP's grandparents! It appears this latter couple had married in Exeter and, judging by the baptisms of their first 3 children, had spent time in Oxfordshire before moving to Essex and then London (and sadly both died in Southwark Workhouse).

More work to do on all this, but it seems this brick wall has come tumbling down as a result of shared DNA matches and thinking 'outside the box' when it comes to tracing elusive baptisms!

 

Yes, I'd thought of that, and I've browsed through the marriages at the church where my ancestor was baptised (St Botolph, Aldgate) and also those at the church where her first child was baptised (Saint Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey) but no luck. Of course there are a lot of other nearby churches so I'd probably need to go through those too.

 

I have a match on Ancestry who I know to be my 2nd cousin twice removed on my mother's side, he is descended from my maternal grandfather's brother. Ancestry flagged the match as Paternal so naturally I changed it to Maternal.

A few days ago I was following the hints on my tree and I discovered that the wife of the aforementioned maternal grandfather's brother is actually related to me on my father's side. So this match that Ancestry said was Paternal is actually related to me on both sides. So maybe Ancestry weren't completely wrong after all.