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The object of delving into the origin of a family surname is to be able to target genealogical research more effectively.
Written accounts, diaries etc are extremely valuable in this research, but beware where they just repeat long-standing suppositions and speculations. Family lore passed down through many generations can give valuable clues and can't necessarily be ignored, but this must not be confused with casual suppositions about places and surnames. It can be hard to separate family lore from unjustifiable suppositions, but remember that repeating unsubstantiated speculations again and again does not make them any truer. The WWW must be treated with particular caution. I hope the strategy described here proves useful to people working on other surnames. Many mysteries still remain, but some hypotheses are presented to help answer them. NB. The WWW has expanded greatly since this web site was first published. The site is reviewed from time to time and revised as necessary.
But most notably, it has long been a commonly held belief, reflected for over a century in sources on the subject, that many, if not most, surnames evolved from the names of places, that is towns or villages - these are called locative or locational surnames - the term locative will be used here. To test the assertion of a link between Swindell/dale as a surname and a particular place called Swindale you must trace ancient records associating a significant group of Swindell/dale families with the precise locality. So first you have to identify where the place called Swindale is, and if there are several of them find which is the most likely candidate.
These and a number of other possibilities are examined here.
This is the one most often cited as the origin of the surname. Some genealogy web sites examined called it Swindale Beck or Swindale Chapelry, but word constructions like these are seldom, if ever, used in England to name hamlets, villages and towns.
It would appear that the reason many people mention Swindale Beck as the origin of their name is because it is the only Swindale they find in road atlases. Swindale Chapelry was probably found in a search of the WWW, but its use to name a settlement or village is erroneous. Swindale is a glacial valley down which the Swindale Beck flows some 3 miles (5 Km) to its confluence with the River Lowther at the village of Rosgill about 2 miles (3 Km) north west of Shap. At its narrowest the dale floor is only about 200 yards (185 metres) wide, with the hills on both sides rising steeply some 800 feet (250 metres) above the valley floor. The plateau above the head of the dale bears the name Swindale Common and a rocky slope above Swindale Foot is called Swindale Foot Crags. The Swindale Beck is for much of its length only a few strides wide, and shallow and stony enough to ford in hiking boots without getting your socks too wet. The dale is unusual for a Lake District glacial valley in having two significant bends. The narrow, single-track, minor road serving the dale is unfenced for much of its length and ends half a mile (1 Km) short of the head of the dale. In recent historical time this road was no more than a cart track, and it continues as footpaths over the fells to adjacent dales.
The farmstead of Swindale Head lies at the top of the dale, and Swindale Foot lies a mile (2 Km) further down where the dale begins to widen out onto the valley of the River Lowther (farmstead names following this pattern are very common in Cumbria and the Pennines). Most of the the half dozen or so house sites in the dale were strung along the half mile (1 Km) of the road in the central, narrowest part, above Swindale Foot, and this was the pattern of settlement in recent historical time.
The hundred years after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 embraced a period of rapid population growth in rural Britain, followed by massive migration from rural areas to the growing towns and cities of Britain after the onset of the Industrial Revolution. In 1777 the parish of Shap (of which the settlement in Swindale was only a very small part) had 182 families, and throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the parish of Shap never had more than 1,000 inhabitants in total. In 1703 a school was built in Swindale, and nearby in 1749 a chapel of ease, administered by the vicar of Shap. Small schools were built in sparsely populated, isolated situations till well into the 19th century, and children often walked considerable distances from outlying farms and hamlets to attend them. Shortly before 1850 there were 13 inhabited houses in Swindale, with a population of 54. In 1854 there were only 8 habitations, and at the turn of the 19th/20th century there were only 3 occupied houses, namely Swindale Head, Truss Gap and Swindale Foot, with a total population of 10. In 1894 the chapel in Swindale was described as having seating for no more than 40 people, and in 1938 it was demolished as part of the construction of Haweswater in nearby Mardale. See a newspaper acount of the farewell service at the chapel (see Ref: [2]).
Mardale was flooded in 1941 to create the reservoir known as Haweswater, from the smaller, natural lake that was already there. This transformed the landscape and destroyed the villages of Measand and Mardale Green and their outliers.
It is said that Swindale was to be flooded with Mardale to supply Manchester's water needs. Although this plan was not carried out, a dam near Truss Gap diverts a proportion of the Swindale Beck through a tunnel to an outfall into Haweswater. Click on the map on the right to locate the dam. Follow the beck downstream (north east) from the site of the school and chapel to the ford that carries two footpaths across the beck, one from the steep Gouthercrag Gill and the other coming upstream parallel to the beck. The dam is a similar distance further downstream. The following description was found in Swindale, Gateshead Civic Walking Club [13] "Swindale - is seldom visited by fellwalkers, although it is a rugged and remote dale with plenty of interesting sights. It is deemed to be too far off the beaten track and is therefore left mostly to walkers living in nearby Penrith and Kendal. There is a fine circuit available which takes in an old Corpse Road, a couple of quiet summits, a long and empty dale, and some striking waterfalls; it is very rare to meet anyone else in the area."
The geology of this area is dominantly limestone, and sink holes are found everywhere. Sink holes are evidence of caverns carved by underground rivers collapsing, and the area is famous for its pot holes.
Above Brough, to the north, the valley down which the beck runs has the features of a V-shaped valley cut by the swiftly flowing waters of the beck rather than a glacial formation. At its steepest and narrowest it cuts about 200 feet (60 metres) below the surrounding moorland in a winding, wooded clint.
For much of its course the Swindale Beck is deep and wide enough to be popular with rough-water kayaking enthusiasts in the right weather conditions. A road meanders roughly parallel to the east of the beck above Brough, heading into County Durham. The farmstead of Swindalehead House lies close to the beck half a mile (1 Km) below its source, The farmstead of Woodside overlooks the beck on a high knoll a further half a mile downstream from Swindalehead House. The farmstead of Thornthwaite stands on the west of the beck opposite Woodside. Swindale Grange was till the end of the 19th century Brough High Mill and stands on the east bank beside the road half a mile (1 Km) upstream from the town. The small, scattered hamlet of Helbeck lies west of the beck about half a mile (1 Km) distant. No other houses or farmsteads are directly associated with the beck above Brough, though about twenty habitations are loosely scattered over a square mile (260 hectares) of moorland to the east. Swindale Wood occupies the banks of part of the steepest, most inaccessible part of the course of the beck, where it carves through the escarpment overlooking Brough - this wood has increased considerably in size since the first edition Ordnance Survey map, so much of it appears to be man-made. There are no other landscape features that bear the name Swindale in the vicinity.
Below Brough there are no habitations associated with the beck till its confluence with the river Eden. The valley of the Swindale Beck above Brough is a significant geographical feature, but there is no coherent group of habitations associated directly with it as at Swindale in the parish of Shap, only a couple of farmsteads overlooking the beck at a distance. The Swindale Beck lies in the parish of Helbeck. There has never been a separate parish called Swindale near Brough, which has always been the centre of administration and trade. A good description of the area can be found on the WWW in Take a Walk around Brough by Nick Channer [14].
This Swindale Beck lies some 4 miles (6 Km) north west of Brough, and due east of the village of Hilton near Appleby.
In all but the most severe conditions the beck can be crossed in a single stride without getting your feet wet. At its deepest, at the mouth of the valley, the evenly-sloping sides climb almost 1,000 feet (over 300 metres) to crags and moorland carrying names such as Swindale Edge, Swindale Crag and Swindale Brow. The valley was either cut by the waters of the beck, or it was part of a glacial head feature that has since been modified by erosion. There are many shake holes in and around the valley (see the full-sized Ordnance Survey map), showing that the bedrock is very porous - this may explain the nature of the valley itself, perhaps formed from regular collapses of underground watercourses, whilst the beck may disappear underground in drought conditions. A bridleway climbs parallel to the beck from an unfenced, unmettled road alongside the Hilton Beck onto the high moorland of Warcop Fell, and eventually leading to the head of the nearby Swindale Beck above Brough, with a footpath branching off into Brough itself via the hamlet of Helbeck. There is no trace of any human habitation associated with this Swindale Beck, though there are abandoned mine workings in nearby Scordale and a single abandoned shaft at the head of the Swindale Beck, and sheep enclosures are found on the moorland above.
This Swindale Beck lies about 5 miles (8 Km) due north of Appleby-in-Westmorland. For most of its length the geology is such that the beck is little more than a stony ril, and can be crossed by stepping from rock to rock without getting your feet wet.
Its source at Swindale Head is at an altitude of 2,300 feet (700 metres) between High Scald Fell and Green Fell, an area of bog and shake holes. From there it cuts a deep, rocky gill through the escarpment overlooking Edendale, through another extensive area of shake holes, before passing beneath the Pennine Way footbridge in the illustration below. It then tumbles more gently towards the south west through the boggy Howe Cauldron at the foot of Knock Pike to meet the Great Rundale Beck at Knock Gill just north east of the small village of Knock, a total fall of some 1,600 feet (500 metres) in 3 miles (5 Km). Apart from the ril cutting through the escarpment below the fells, the beck appears to flow through relatively flat, though steeply sloping, land rather than a feature that you could call a dale. The beck and its source at Swindale Head are the only geographical features on the OS map that carry the name Swindale. There is no trace of any human habitation associated with the beck, its only claim to modern fame being the Pennine Way that follows it on its way over Great Dun Fell to Cross Fell.
These Swindales are some 10 miles (16 Km) south east of Shap and a similar distance south west of Brough. They both lie on the east side of Weasdale, and carry tributaries of the Weasdale Beck, which drains northwards off of Howgill Fell and Ravenstonedale Common into the River Lune in Lunedale. Weasdale, Great Swindale and Little Swindale all share the same geology, soil and grassy, heathland habitat. Great Swindale has the characteristics of a glacial dale, as does Weasdale itself, whilst Little Swindale is shallower and less well defined, and is dominated by the gill carved by the Little Swindale Beck. The sandstone and siltstone geology of the area is very different from the limestone of the Yorkshire Pennines to the north and east, and the igneous rock of the Lakeland mountains to the west. Here there are no shake holes, crags or rocky, precipitous gills, rather the area is characterised by rounded, open hills most typical of the title fell. Great and Little Swindale are very isolated, lying to the north of Howgill Fells, and bypassed by tracks which generally follow the highest ridges, taking in the spectacular views. The watercourses in both these dales are insubstantial, and can be scrabbled over fairly easily without getting your boots wet. There is no trace of human habitation in the Swindales or along the Weasdale Beck before the village of Weasdale itself, though there are a couple of large sheep enclosures.
Some 60 miles (100 Km) due east of Brough, below the foothills of the North York Moors, 12 miles (20 Km) east by south east of Middlesborough, 6 miles (10 Km) west by south west of Staithes and 4 miles (7 Km) south by south east from Saltburn inland from the North Sea coast, 4 miles (7 Km) east of Guisborough, 3 miles (5 Km) south east of the village of Skelton, and half a mile (1 Km) west of the village of Moorsholm in the ancient North Riding of Yorkshire, lies a roughly rectangular area of undulating countryside less than half a mile square (less than 1 square Km) named Swindale. Next to Swindale near Shap this is the second most popularly cited location for the origin of the surname, probably because it is mentioned in "A Dictionary of English Surnames" (see below for citation [11]).
The area is skirted on the south by Swindale Lane which runs westwards out of the village of Moorsholm, on the west by an ancient land boundary, on the north by the Dale Beck, and on the east by the Swindale Beck. The Swindale Beck, wiggling its way some 4 furlongs (800 metres) through a scrubbily wooded valley, is just one, short section of a watercourse with several names along its length, following the custom of the region. This watercourse starts as the Haredale Beck in Haredale on Moorsholm Moor, becoming the Oven Close Beck at Oven Close Bridge near Smeathorns, and finally the Swindale Beck at Swindale Lane, before joining with the Dale Beck to become the Hagg Beck north west of Moorsholm. (The Dale Beck is also just one section of a watercourse that has many names along its length, and the Hagg Beck finally flows into the sea as the Kilton Beck.) With care the narrow Swindale Beck can be leapt without getting your boots too muddy. A feature called Swindale Nook is marked about the middle of Swindale Lane.
An early reference records the place name in the 13th century:- The History and Antiquities of Cleveland: Comprising the Wapentake of East and West Langbargh: p595 from Dugdale's Baronage. By John Walker Ord ? reprinted 1972 Alan Swindale [2] This describes the dismemberment of an estate spread across the north of the North Riding of Yorkshire consisting of a number of separate, discrete land-holdings. The estate would have been made up from land units granted to a supporter of William the Conqueror after 1066, with other small units perhaps coming from marriages during the following 200 years. The slice given to Lucia, the wife of Marmaduke de Thweng, includes a number of valuable villages and towns, with Swindale being just one part of the common and chase of Wauer. This description shows that Swindale was an area of land reserved for hunting, with commoners rights granted to local inhabitants for pasturing animals, gathering wood, etc. The following entry is taken from "A Dictionary of English Surnames" [11]:- Swindell, Swindells: James Swindell 1621 SRY; Humphrey Swindells 1647 PN Ch i 147. From Swindale House in Skelton (NRY).
"As I interpret this it means that the name James Swindell was found in the Subsidy Rolls for Yorkshire in 1621, and the name Humphrey Swindells in a reference from 1647 in 'The Place Names of Cheshire' from the English Place Names Society, Vol i, page 147, and these people were associated with Swindale House in Skelton in the North Riding of Yorkshire". Alan Swindale [2] So the placename has existed in the landscape since at least 1271, and probably for centuries before that. The regular nature of the field boundaries shown in the First Series Ordnance Survey map, coupled with the references above, suggests that the present-day Swindale Farm was founded as a result of a land enclosure some time during the 16th to the early 17th century, when it was created from open, common moorland. The farm was called after a long-established and accepted traditional name in the area. Before the enclosure this area would have been kept uninhabited as a chase, or hunting land, and for commoners to exercise their rights.
Westray is one of the northernmost inhabited islands of the Orkney archipelago, twenty miles (30 Km) off the northern tip of Scotland. Historically the Orkneys were ruled by Norway after Vikings settled there in the 9th century. The Vikings displaced the Celtic or Pictish population, and for centuries the language spoken there was Norn, a dialect of Old Norse similar to Faeroese and Icelandic. In the middle ages the population began to come under the influence of Scotland, their nearest trading partner, and Norn gradually gave way to Scots. The lordship of the Orkneys passed to a Scot, and they were finally annexed by Scotland in 1468. Norn died out in the late 18th century, though most placenames in Orkney today are of Norse origin. (See more about Norn and Scots.) The geographical feature marked as Swine Dale on Westray in the Orkneys is a shallow depression, some 540 yards (500 metres) long, running down the middle of a spur or ridge. There is no suggestion of a stream on the Ordnance Survey map of the area, though it may have been obscured by peat growth over the last couple of thousand years. Or the feature may represent a fault or some other geological phenomenon. Swine Dale runs steeply down towards cliffs some 200 feet (60 metres) high just south of the point of Red Nev on the exposed western coast of the island, with nothing to protect it from whatever the Atlantic might throw at it. There are no traces of human habitations in the area, most dwellings being on the eastern side of the island, in the lee of the few, but high, hills.
The following deed from 1756 names the constituent parts of an estate in Shawbury and Moreton Corbet, Shropshire. One of these parts is called Swindle and is highlighted below.
The deed lists packages of land, most of which appear to be specific fields, but some may be larger packages constituting farms or smallholdings. The compiler will investigate this further.
Syndale is a dry valley through the chalk downs of north Kent, climbing gently south westwards from near Faversham. A large house now called Syndale Park Motel appears to have been the centre of an old estate, and buildings called Syndale Farm and Syndale Farm Cottages are found in the vicinity. Five miles (8 Km) further up the valley, near the village of Wichling, is a house called Syndale Bottom.
Six of the eight Swindale and Swindale Beck placenames are found within 20 miles (30 Km) of each other in Westmorland, and a seventh is on the same latitude on the other side of the country. The placename Grizedale is also taken to mean pig valley (from Old Norse), and it is found in the same area as the knot of Swindales in Westmorland. These Grizedale locations are greater in number than the Swindales and they spread more widely, extending southwards into north Lancashire. The concentration of Swindale/Grizedale place names in this one small area is a curiosity that fascinates the compiler, but for reasons you will see below it probably has no relevance to the origins of the surname Swindell/Swindale etc, so the question is not pursued here. However if you are interested, See thoughts on this clustering.
To the compiler's surprise, no surnames whatsoever that would approximate to Swindell/Swindale etc were found in any official records relating to the parish of Shap, nor in upper Edendale or Lunedale. A few Swindale marriages appear in the 17th to 19th centuries in towns close to Shap in Westmorland, such as Penrith and Alston, and the surname is still found in Cumbria today. However, similar numbers of Swindell/Swindale records are found in other counties of England in the same period, so it cannot be concluded with certainty that those found today in Cumbria represent a significant concentration of long-standing native residents rather than more recent immigration (more about these later). The only link between Swindale House in the old North Riding of Yorkshire and a Swindale family is the implicit suggestion in a Cheshire reference. Searches of the WWW revealed no other Swindells/Swindales in the area in antiquity, nor in more recent times. No record of any surname similar to Swindale was found in Orkney, nor in the vicinity of Uckington in Shropshire. Only one Swindell/dale family was found on the WWW in the area of Syndale in Kent, in a blog reporting on the 1881 census - they lived near Faversham and were involved in stone masonry, and they were all born in Matlock in Derbyshire. Also Joseph Alexander Swindale, the ancestor of the correspondent who brought him to the compiler's attention, was not found in the search - this was because Bagshaw's Directory is presented on the WWW in image form only, not as text (Note that only the actual text of a web site can be automatically incorporated in indexes generated for search engines, not the contents of a picture, photograph or other image) - this does not deny Joseph Alexander Swindale's existence, but a single name can easily be lost on the WWW. (These occurances will be reexamined against the greatly increased genealogical information now available on the WWW. David Swindell, March 2013)
The only Swindale etc locations found to be associated with the surname Swindell/Swindale etc were those near Moorsholm in the North Riding in the 17th century, and Syndale and Faversham in Kent in the 19th century. A Swindell family appears to have had a fleeting association with Swindale farm near Moorsholm, but left after a generation or two with no descendants remaining in the area. The only family found near Syndale in Kent hailed from Derbyshire, and no other trace was found of the family of Joseph Alexander Swindale. The earliest records transcribed onto the WWW for the Shap, Edendale and Lunedale areas show no Swindell/Swindale etc surnames, and there is no trace of the name there today. This strongly suggests that these areas did not contain Swindales etc at the time records began. The placename Grizedale is considered to have the same meaning as that generally ascribed to Swindale, and it is found in the same area as the knot of Swindales in Westmorland. It is also a well-known, long-standing surname in the area today, and in the Westmorland Protestation Returns of 1641/2 [30] it is seen as Grosdall and Grysedall - but no Swindale etc surnames appear in the Protestation Returns.
It is the compiler's conclusion that none of the Swindale locations examined here was the original home of the Swindell/Swindale/Swindle etc surname. (See the reasoning behind this conclusion.)
No records of Swindale etc surnames were found associated with any of the Swindales in Cumbria, nor in Orkney. The Swindale name associated with Moorsholm is believed to be transient, and references to the name at the other possible locations are extremely sparse or non-existent. If the absence of records can be taken as indicating that they didn't come from a place, then where did they come from? Or if they did come from a Swindale but the line died out in their native place before records began, where did the unrecorded ancestors(s) migrate to in order to establish the dynasties we see today? The studies below examine Swindell/Swindale etc communities in all English counties, and specifically in Cheshire, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Kent, Manchester, and in Hexham and Alston in Northumberland.
Alan Swindale's family was resident in Cumberland (north west Cumbria) throughout the 20th century. The starting point was the assumption that the family had its roots in Swindale near Shap, but the conclusions were a surprise.
There is strong reason to believe that many, if not all, of the Swindales later recorded in the Hexham area, Alston, Allenheads, west Cumbria and County Durham are descendants of these.
One Swindle family living in Nenthead near Alston throughout the 20th century maintains the family lore that they came originally from Derbyshire, this lore dating from before 1916. Family lore must always be treated carefully, but cannot necessarily be discounted. In this case the Derbyshire connection is so surprising that it may have a much stronger source than mere supposition, since Swindale near Shap is very close by. Also the Swindale families in Hexham to the north, who are known to have been there since at least the 17th century, are known to have spread to Alston and the surrounding lead mining communities before moving further west to the Cumbrian coast. So this Derbyshire family lore, possibly dating back as far as eight generations, may be quite credible despite the lack of documentary evidence. However, it might also be that these Swindles are unrelated to the Hexham Swindales, and moved to Nenthead from Derbyshire more recently. IGI records show one Swindale family to be in Leicestershire (adjacent to Derbyshire) in 1692, and others in Lincolnshire (adjacent to Leicestershire), with a marriage as far south as Woodbridge, Suffolk, and a record in Thirsk, Yorkshire, in 1605. See http://www.fivenine.co.uk/family_history_notebook/general/origins.htm for a full update of Alan's report.
The following letter was written after 1862 by the compiler's great great grandfather, who was born and bred in north Kent. It records the family lore and memories of one person concerning his genealogy dating back about 130 years, covering four generations. Other documents surviving in the family, of a similar age to this letter but gathered independently, support this family lore, and extend it back at least another 50 years.
From this letter and other sources, Francis Swindell (the compiler's great great great great great grandfather) was born about 1735 and left his native place around the middle of the 1700s to settle in North Kent. It is presumed that the last of Francis' family remaining in Derbyshire died out, with no further issue, some time after Francis' death in Kent in 1794/5, hence the visit by two gentlemen ... from Derbyshire looking for his widow to arrange distribution of property from the estate. It was always a matter of family lore that two brothers came down to Kent from Derbyshire, and the name Jasper appears in the family archive relating to the legacy. No property came to the compiler's family, but some appears to have gone to the descendants of Jasper's daughter, Elizabeth, so Jasper may have been Francis' older brother, or his uncle. There is reason to believe that the small concentration of Swindell families present in North Kent since the 18th century originated from Francis and Jasper Swindell. This small collection of letters, connected with a small number of Swindell families in Kent which claim their origin in Derbyshire, cannot on its own be reckoned to be firm evidence for the origin of the surname, but it was the spur for this study, and in particular the analysis of records on the WWW below.
The compiler knew that his family line started in Derbyshire, and family lore equated the name with swine dale. So it was a great surprise to find there was no locality named anything like Swinedale in the county. However, neighbours in London where he lived at the time pointed to the name existing in other parts of England, in particular Appledore in Devonshire. So from an early age the compiler was determined to look into where the name may have actually originated. After identifying the Swindales in Westmorland, the North Riding and Orkney, it was a further surprise to find no significant presence of the surname in any of those localities. However, searching the WWW for versions of the surname in Derbyshire gave a very significant return. But searching solely on Derbyshire, Westmorland, the North Riding and Orkney is unsatisfactory, it doesn't prove anything because it ignores the possibility of significant communities elsewhere in Britain. So WWW searches were made for the presence of various versions of the surname in each county of England. (Methods used when searching the WWW.) In this lengthy, tedious procedure only Derbyshire produced more than just a few responses, and many English counties produced none at all. The few responses from present-day Cumbria centred on Alston and Penrith, towns later identified in Alan Swindale's Research into the Origins of the Swindale Surname [2] reported above, most of which were involved, historically, in lead mining. No responses came from Shap or any of the other settlements close to the Swindales and Swindale Becks surrounding Upper Edendale. Searches on Cheshire found no more instances of the surname than most other counties, and certainly far fewer than Derbyshire, leading to the initial conclusion that it was not an ancient home for the family name. This has since been re-examined in the light of correspondence received since this web site was published (see below).
Kent was the first home for the compiler's branch of the family after Francis, and perhaps Jasper, Swindell left Derbyshire in the 18th century. A growing population of Swindell families lived there throughout the 19th century, and many are still there today, but the searches of Kent gave a negligible response, far smaller than for Derbyshire, so the name was definitely a minority presence there. Also returns from Cumbria and all other counties were considerably less than those from Derbyshire, in a great many showing no presence for the name at all. David Swindell, March 2013 The observations and conclusion from this study are supported by the more recent, and far more objective, study "Surnames as a quantitative resource" to be presented below.
The variety of spellings in this study is worth noting, as more limited studies by their very nature represent a sample, where this is a full account for the period, including some questionable spellings. Analysis of Swindel spellings in Stoney Middleton and Eyam over time.
Fourteen occurances of the surname are recorded in the archive during the 46 years between 1668 and 1714, variously spelled as Swindale, Swindall, Swindell, Swindill and Swindle. Note that the Stoney Middleton and Eyam occurrances average out to some 0.85 references per year, where at Wirksworth this figure is 0.31. The Wirksworth figures, however, fall in the period before the explosion in population of the mid 1700s. Fourteen examples over 46 years is too small a sample to examine the occurrance of the surname over time as with Stoney Middleton and Eyam above. Targeted searches on the WWW for Swindale/dell/etc in Wirksworth found a few Swindale etc births and marriages in the 17th to 19th centuries, and also showed that the surname is still in the area today, but again, information on the WWW cannot be considered fully representative or complete. The compiler has since spoken to people from Wirksworth, who recognise Swindell as a common surname in the area. No Swingle or Swingler records are recorded in the archive. Information and views of Wirksworth [19].
In verbal statements given to the compiler in 1972 and 1987, members of separate Swindell and Swindells families from Manchester acknowledge Derbyshire as their ancestral homes [1], and demographic analysis by the compiler suggests this could be true (but see also Cheshire below). The dates their ancestors moved there are not known, and this information is so far only anecdotal, but the proximity of Derbyshire to Manchester, which grew rapidly in the 19th century, suggests that a number of different ancestors could be involved. NB. The centre of Manchester lies some 24 miles (38 Km) from Buxton, the northernmost major town in Derbyshire, and the suburbs of Greater Manchester come within 12 miles (19 Km) of Buxton.
The postcard on the right shows a house or farmstead called Swindell's Fold at Godley near Manchester about 1910. Godley lies east of Manchester, and about 7½ miles (12 Km) north east of Cheadle in Cheshire, of which more below. The name of this house suggests that a moderately wealthy Swindell family may have been established in the area at some time in the past. The compiler looks forward to hearing from Swindell etc genealogists in Manchester to add positive substance to the history of their name there.
When carrying out searches on the WWW to identify knots of Swindale/dells in various counties of England, Cheshire produced no more returns than any other county, and considerably fewer than Derbyshire. However, further research and correspondence since the initial publication of this web site showed a firm presence of the name in the county. Contributors included a reference to a A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American Instances [26], published 1901, in which the author points to the existence of a small estate called Swindelves in the ancient township of Handforth cum Bosden, south of Cheadle, with the implication that his Swindells ancestors and the placename Swindelves could be connected. Handforth cum Bosden lies about 9 miles (14 km) north of Macclesfield, and 20 miles (32 km) by road from Buxton in north Derbyshire - See more. It appears that the county boundary and hilly terrain between Cheshire and Derbyshire was never an obstacle to the movement of the Swindell/s name and families. Or perhaps there is a characteristic of the language, local terrain or traditional, agricultural practice around the Pennine hills in this area that has predisposed the surname to appear there in more than one locality.
It is getting on for twenty years since the searches described above - my first serious forray into the WWW - and there is now a great deal more genealogical information available on the WWW. Cheshire genealogists have added their own researches, expanding on the Family History site, and if I were to repeat my tedious searches of all the British counties I am sure Cheshire would give a bigger return than my first try. However, the general conclusions here still hold without looking further into Cheshire.
This study, which was released onto the WWW in 2006 as the Surname Profiler, allowed you to examine the distribution of surnames in Britain in 1881 and 1998. The statistics for 1881 were, of course, taken from the national census in that year. Examination of the Surname Profiler confirmed the conclusions of this study, that the highest concentration of the surname Swindell/dale, and other closely related names, in antiquity was around Derbyshire. Compiler's comments on the Surname Profiler database. See http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/
It looks as if centuries ago significant groups of people sharing the Swindells/Swindales etc surname lived in Derbyshire and East Cheshire, but did all of today's Swindells/Swindales etc come from this area?
Another conclusion might be that it is the earliest home for them that can be traced through the records. It might still be suggested that the original ancestor(s) moved to this area from nearby Leicestershire or Lincolnshire, or one of the Swindales in Westmorland or the North Riding, or from Northumberland, Orkney, or even the Mendips, but no records were found that could support this.
No, because there isn't one! Despite the county being rich in ruggedly beautiful dales, and the home of the largest recorded number of Swindell/Swindale etc families in antiquity, there is no present-day placename that approximates to Swindale, and none that might be construed as having looked like Swine Dale in antiquity. There was, however, in antiquity a place whose name comes down to us today through 14th century documents as Swindelves in the present-day district of Hazel Grove, Stockport, where one source places his Swindells ancestors over a long period. The precise location of Swindelves has not yet been identified. In the same area today there are remnants of three farms called Swineseye, Upper Swineseye and Lower Swineseye.
The following paragraphs discuss other possible origins for the surname. Some of this is based on fact, and some is as speculative as the traditional assumption that it comes from a place called Swindale.
This derivation is also suggested in the following documents from the compiler's family archive:-
Letter sent to the parish clerks of 37 parishes in London, Surrey and Kent in 1857 [1]
Advertisement in the Times Monday December 26 1859, edition 23,499 [1]
It isn't known whether the Swindell/Swingle synonym in the above documents was introduced by the solicitor or by his client, the compiler's great grandfather, but it did not come down through family lore to the present day despite these documents being known to subsequent generations [1].
But the Wirksworth archive [4] doesn't show any Swingle or Swingler surnames.
Furthermore no Swingles, neither ancient nor modern, appear in a web search of Derbyshire. However, Swingler appears in the early 1800s, and continues to the present day. NB. Targeted searches on the WWW cannot be considered fully representative or complete [1].
The significance of this is not immediately clear, however it must be stressed that the IGI, from which the data in the table were extracted, is not the definitive source, though like the telephone book it gives a feel for population numbers. The IGI reflects church records from the 1500s in Britain, covering about 350 years, whilst the figures from North America, likewise church records, only cover about 150 years from the late 1700s, whilst the social history of population movements with regard to the two regions is very different.
The English placename Swindale is only found in areas of Britain that were Norse speaking, and similar names survive throughout the Norse and Scandinavian world. The Norse tradition has two ways of forming a surname :- The surnames Svinadalur, Svinadal, Svinndal and Svindal are found in Iceland, Norway and Sweden. These are taken from placenames that are generally presumed to mean Pig Valley. Svinedal, Svendal and Svennedal are placenames and surnames found in Denmark, and the surname Svandal is also found in Iceland and Scandinavia. See more about Norse and the other Germanic languages of Britain.
A search for Swindell finds a great many in the United States, where most of the family genealogy sites seen followed family lore (and questionably "authoritative" sources) in suggesting the surname derived from Swindale, or Pig Valley, locating it near Shap in Westmorland, modern Cumbria, England. Many of these certainly came from England, but in many other cases the name had a quite different root :-
So, although many American Swindell/dale families can be shown to have originated in Britain, care must be taken in assuming a link in all cases. The link may not, however, be completely impossible:-
The following section is the compiler's speculation on other meanings of the surname and placename, based on his knowledge of the way that surnames and placenames have changed over the centuries. If it doesn't interest you please skip straight to the Summary and conclusions.
This study began with the assumption that the surname we write today as Swindell/dale/etc was taken centuries ago from a place called Swine Dale. The study found no link in the records between today's Swindell/dale/etc surname and any of the Swindale locations in Britain. It would appear that the assumption that a name ending in -dale or -dell must necessarily have come from a valley does not always hold. We have also seen that within a single genetic line, a family name that was first recorded in 1754 as Swindel varied through Swindilah, Swindale, Swindily, Swindley, Swindlah, Swindley, Swindleah, Swindley, Swindlah and Swinley, until it finally settled on Swindley. The following is the compiler's thoughts and flights of fancy on how the name might have developed from something that might have had nothing much to do with pigs and dales. This is, of course, pure speculation, but is it any less valid than the notion that Swindale/Swindell derives from a place whose name means pig valley, a notion that both the major contributors to this site have found to be false?
For instance Simonburn, a small village in Northumberland, looks like it is called after a stream or burn, but its ancient name, Simonsbyrgan, shows it was a fortified place or byrg, and sure enough the ancient ruins of a substantial fortified house sit on a hill in the village. So we can't be sure that a placename we see today is anything like it was centuries ago. Consequently we cannot claim that a surname which today looks like a particular, modern placename must have come from there, because we don't know what the placename was in antiquity, in the age when surnames were beginning to emerge.
Similarly with surnames. When a young man ran away to be a soldier he might have named himself after the place where he grew up, and on his discharge he might have settled just a few miles or many counties away from his native place. As the generations went by the pronunciation of his surname would change with the dialect of his new adopted home. Coupled with that, changes in the English language would make elements of the surname that were once meaningful quite meaningless, or take on new meanings, whilst the placename suffers similar, quite independent, changes. On top of this, the memory of his original native place will be lost within a generation or so. It might be passed down to his children, and possibly his grandchildren, but how many of us knew where our great grandparents lived before we started digging into the records, records that were much more difficult to find and consult in days gone by? So any real family association between the surname and a location can be lost in a couple of generations, and the pronunciation of the name will then evolve quite independently of the pronunciation of the forgotten placename.
The table on the right shows just a few modern surnames, with the modern spellings of the places which it is known they originated from. The last two surnames in particular could lead you to assume that they refer to places beside fords in rivers, but this is obviously not the case. And a name that originally had nothing whatsoever to do with a dale or a dell could also evolve in just the same way to look, misleadingly, as if it did. So claiming that a surname as we see it today must have originated from a placename that today looks somewhat similar is often quite false. This could then lead the genealogist in completely wrong directions in their researches, as indeed it initially did with the main contributors to this web site when we followed family lore to the Swindales in Westmorland. Unfortunately, the questionable assumption that certain names, such as Swindale, must be locative still persists, with many sources quoting the authors and antiquarians of over a hundred years ago who started and perpetuated the notion. Modern writers put less emphasis on placenames being the origin of surnames than was the case in the mid 20th century. For recent published accounts see:-
In these writings it has been demonstrated that locative surnames, ones derived from the names of geographical places, most notably towns and villages, tend to be concentrated close to the places the names were taken from, remaining there even if the original settlement disappeared long ago. It is further noted that many such surnames now look nothing like the original placenames, and only close etymological and historical examination has drawn out the connection. You should not make assumptions about the origins of placenames or surnames from their modern spellings without looking more deeply into their etymology and histories. But authors continue to perpetuate the locative notion, which in this case, and many others, may well be a myth.
But a surname could equally, and perhaps more probably, have come from a descriptive nickname, trade name or occupation rather than a place. An occupation, in particular, may be passed down from father to son, such as Thatcher, Archer, Shepherd etc, and after a few generations it could be fixed as the surname of everybody in the family. You may feel that a surname like Swindale is unlikely to have come from an occupation or nickname, because the dale at the end has all the features of something that is seen in modern placenames. But the fact that dale in a surname looks like the word we use for a geographical feature, a valley, could be nothing more than an accident of time, dialect and spelling. Who can say what a nickname in the Danish/Saxon dialect of the mid Pennines in the middle ages sounded like? We only have their modern spellings, not their ancient sounds, and these spellings have only been stable for a couple of centuries, a few generations. It may well have sounded and meant nothing like the surname we see written today - the elements swin and dale could have grown from something quite different from the pigs and valleys we assume from today's speech and spelling.
From the absence of any Swindale placename in Derbyshire it looks as if the name may not be a locative name, so some descriptive name should be considered. Amongst the contenders might be names ending in the Old English word dœll meaning a dalesman (OED). So Sweindœll (swain-dool) could have been the name of someone called Swein living in a nearby dale - "Swein the Dalesman". Or in an age when Saxons were differentiated from more recent Nordic settlers, Sweondœll (swee-on-dool) could have identified the Swedes or Vikings living in the dale. Names like these could have been applied to many people living in separate dales, which could explain the wide distribution of the name in the county. Also a Danish dialect could have survived long after the Norman conquest in the rough, remote, hilly countryside of Derbyshire, and the personal names would have been carried into the new age of the "standard" English of the official translations of the bible. This is, of course, speculation, but for more thoughts on how the surname could have evolved from ancient Saxon and Nordic words meaning something other than pigs and dales see :-
But if you prefer to believe the surname comes from somewhere called Swindale, by all means go straight to the conclusions below.
Swindale near Shap is only one of several locations bearing the name, all of them in the north of Britain, but the studies presented here find no evidence to link the surname Swindell/Swindale etc with any of them. Large groups of many different spellings of the surname are recorded in Derbyshire in the earliest extant records. No other counties in England sampled on the WWW had such numbers. Independent analysis of the 1881 census shows the greatest concentration of Swindell/Swindells surnames in the Derbyshire area, with a significant population of Swindales, and a significant, though lesser, presence in east Cheshire. This suggests that Derbyshire/East Cheshire is the earliest traceable home of the Swindell/Swindale etc surname. No link was found between Swindell/dale etc and Swingle/Swingler in Derbyshire in antiquity. No Swindale placename has been found in Derbyshire, but there was in antiquity a place called Swindelves in east Cheshire, and places carrying the name Swineseye survive there til today. It is the compiler's conclusion that the surname did not originate in any of the Swindales in Westmorland, but in the Derbyshire/East Cheshire area. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| David Swindell |
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