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Are you part of the landscape?
Mar 4, 2008
JUST how long have old established families lived in Teesdale - 300 years, or perhaps 500 or maybe even 1,000? Can you trace your own family back a long way? We might be surprised to find that Teesdale families are much less part of the landscape than we imagine. When you start to look at the records you soon realise that people move in and out of Teesdale much more than is commonly thought. There are, however, a few families whose names crop up throughout the centuries.
The best places to look for the names of Teesdale families are in the tax returns and in the various parish registers. And then, after the mid-19th century, the census returns can be consulted.
The tax returns go back much further than the parish registers. The earliest lists go back nearly as far as surnames themselves. Most of our family names give us the name of the village one of our ancestors came from, like Dent or Bainbridge. Or they describe the place where they lived, like Wood or Beck.
Other names remind us that we were descended from someone called Robin, as in Robbins or Robinson, or Meg, as in Megson and Megginson.
Still others describe the work done by one of our ancestors, such as Smith, obviously a blacksmith, or Fletcher, which means a maker of arrows. Finally, there are names that were originally nicknames or names describing the physical features of some family member who lived long ago. So we could be blessed with a name such as Short or Grey or even Tiplady. And I'm afraid I can't tell you the meaning of the last name, the Mercury not being a tabloid newspaper.
The earliest reliable list of names is found in the records of the Yorkshire Lay Subsidies - a fancy name for taxes. The records for the tax collected in 1301 are published by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society and available in libraries.
If we take the names for a relatively small rural community, they can be compared to names from a later date. It's not quite as easy as that, because the names in the 1301 list were written in Latin.
Bearing that in mind, let's look at some of the names for Whorlton for example. There's Hugh son of William - we would say Williamson or Williams or perhaps Wilson today.
Then there's Walter Stibbing, John Tailor, Thomas Carpenter, Roger in le Wra - I don't know what that one means - Stephen Undertree, another son of William, Richard Tepel and the Lord of the Manor, who was Nicholas Meynell. There are then two men described as being from Herhowe (does anyone know where that is?) then a Robert of Tranholme, a son of Walter, Robert son of Punne, Theobald the Reeve and a lady called Matilda ad frenam, whose name means ‘at the ash tree'.
Whorlton is quite a good place to choose because its parish registers go back to the beginning of the 17th century, barely 300 years later. Not a long time really: that's about nine generations.
However, the later names are completely different. In the earliest register are recorded lots of Dinsdales, Ovingtons, Soulebys and Shutts. There isn't an Ash or an Undertree or even a Meynell to be found. The Lord of the manor is a Wycliffe in 1628 and later on, a Witham becomes the Lord of the Manor. There are a couple of Wilsons in the register, but William has always been a popular Christian name, so they aren't necessarily from the same family as those in the 1301 list.
With the exception of Wilson, none of the names on the 1301 list for Whorlton are to be found in the 17th century parish registers.
Maybe it's just Whorlton. However, a quick glance at the 1301 list for Bowes reveals the same thing. Here in 1301, the Lord of the Manor was a man called Gichardo - we would probably call him Wichard.
Interestingly, there are three people on the list called Darc', thought to be short for Arcubus, which translates into English as ‘Bowes'. Apart from various sons of Alan, Isabel, John and Thomas, other names from the Bowes lay subsidy list include Toller, Fisher, Rokeby, Eskelby, Galway and Crook. There are also a couple of Salemans, Bolerons and a Coupstack. Bowes registers date from the late 17th century but here, as in Whorlton, there is a completely new set of names. We find Laidman and Coates, Binks and Spedding. There are lots of Aldersons and Hanbys and Bainbridges. Sayer and Kipling, Parkin and Dent are all there. These are all names that we would recognise as Teesdale names today. One family name did survive the 300 years. There were people with the surname Bowes living in the village in 1301 and in 1701 - but that is the only name that is the same. I wonder what happened between 1300 and 1700 to make such a profound change. It can't have been the Black Death can it? Has anyone any other suggestions?
First published in the Mercury, February 20, 2008