 WESSEX ME ROOTS |
|||
|
|
|||
| Welcome to Wessex & Chardnet. Press Control+B to Bookmark this site for later reference. | |||
| For
our extensive coverage of Wessex & Mercia - Click on to the County
of your choice for Attractions, Events, Tennis Clubs, Radio Stations, Sports, Theatre and much more |
|||
WHERE & WHAT IS WESSEX? (from "Whitlock's Wessex " by Ralph Whitlock 1975) Wessex is the cradle
of
England. Here most things English came to birth and were nourished and
protected
through a difficult infancey. But for one or two of those incalculable
accidents
of history, we would now be hearing the BBC Newsreader every morning
announce, 'Marnin'to ee all. Here be the tidings vor....'
Consider the verb 'to be'. In standard English the present tense now runs, I am, Thou art, He is, We are, They are. A mongrel hotchpotch culled from goodness how many verbs. Compare it with the Wessex: I be, Thou bist, He be, We be, You be, They be. An old English verb, perfectly conjugated. Nothing irregular about it, except that a Wessex man will use thee instead of thou, while, of course, a Devon man would say us instead of me. And until recently Dorset and Wiltshire folk would use her for everything except a tomcat, which was always he. Even so, Wessex speech is much nearer to the original Anglo-Saxon than is Oxford English, which is a kind of debased dialect - as every Wessex man will confirm. Wessex speech, with its 'v's and 'z's and broad vowels, is still understood and used throughout Wessex. Indeed, a rough-and-ready definition of Wessex is the province where it is so used. It would include all of Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Devon; most of Hampshire and parts of Berkshire and Gloucestershire. Cornwall should come in ,too, I think. Cornwall was incorporated into the historical Wessex at a later date and so preserved for longer its Celtic identity and much of its Celtic Speech. The Cornish are insular to the extent that a Cornishman standing on the hills by Callington was able to comment, as he gazed at some apparently similar hills on the eastern horizon, 'There! Now who'd live in a place like that?' When asked what was the matter with it he replied with infinite scorn, 'Why, that's Devon.' Another well-educated Cornishman who I met at Helston soon after the war commented, quite seriously, 'Well, I've finished my travels and now that I'm out of the RAF I don't ever want to go back to England again. Nevertheless, there is a similarity between present-day Cornish speech and that of central Wessex. To Thomas Hardy it was 'Outer Wessex' and so it shall be for us. Wessex folk have a Shibboleth. It is, Thee cassen zee as well as thee coo'st, ca'st? And if thee coo'st thee oosen! Anyone who can understand that, by ear alone, can qualify as a Wessex man. I think most Cornish could. The origin of Wessex is, of course, a matter of history. Wessex, the country of the West Saxons, was the largest, most enduring and most civilized of the Anglo-Saxon states. Our Royal family is descended directly from the West Saxon kings, the first of whom was the half-legendary Cerdic, who, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, landed with a war band somewhere on the south coast in the year 495. The Wessex royal family provided the first king of all England, Egbert. In 878, 53 years later, Wessex, alone of all the kingdoms of western Christendom, fought the rampaging Northmen to a standstill. Alfred, the hero of that epic, is the only English king ever to have been awarded the title 'the Great'. For several centuries the political and social life of England was centered on Winchester, the Wessex capital. Probably it was the feud between Edward the Confessor and his mother, the redoubtable Queen Emma, that led to London, where Edward founded Westminster Abbey, usurping the place of Winchester, where Emma lived. But for centuries afterwards Wessex still led in commerce and industry. The West Country was studded with flourishing little weaving-towns and wool markets long before that industry moved to the North. Bristol & Southampton were the foremost among dozens of thriving ports along the southern and south-western coasts. In recent years a trend towards regionalism, as a reaction to overmuch centralism, has revived the concept of Wessex. While some of the suggested new regions have had little logical basis in either history or geography Wessex, based on historical extent, would have an immense potential and would be at least homogeneous as Wales or Ulster. Published by the Moonraker Press. 26 St.Margaret's Street, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire C 1975 Ralph Whitlock |
|||
|
|
A
Knight's Tale
I
had to let the drawbridge down recently to entertain Barry Lawrence
Goble of Boden Street, Chard. He brought a copy of his coat of arms
verified by the College of arms. The name of Goble,
sometime Gobel is believed to have been a comparitively recent variant
on the ancient Anglo-Saxon personal name of Godbold or Godbead. Godbold
is recorded in the "Doomsday Book" "as a previous Anglo-Saxon tenant". It
is believed that the family, which included the Earl
of Arundel" (beheaded by Elisabeth I for being Catholic) are renowned
through
history and include Mamie Doud Eisenhower, wife of President Dwight
Eisenhower.
The interesting part of all this is that the crest includes the
Wyvern
which, historically could only have been carried by the Royal Family of
Wessex. Note it is a green wyvern . Heraldic records, however,
seem
to point more towards Sussex and Burpham and Petworth. This ties in
with
the connection with the Earl of Arundel. Obviously the Godbold ancestor
came
from Saxony and was connected with the Saxon conquest of South East
Briton.
However we can not be sure that they were here at the time of Cerdic.
He
got us thinking about true Wessex names. So we did some research |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In 1890, Henry Brougham Guppy published Homes of Family Names in Great Britain. This was a survey of English surnames arranged by county. This list was later updated by William Addison in Understanding English Surnames. Guppy drew mainly on the surnames of late Victorian yeoman farmers, regarding them as the group most likely to remain rooted in one spot. This assumption has been criticised, but no other serious survey has been carried out into regionally based surnames, so Guppy's and Addison's lists form the basis of the following list of surnames found solely within the eight Wessex shires. For a critical assessment of Guppy and Addison’s methodologies and limitations see the English Local Surnames web page. With the caveats listed above and on that website, if any of the following surnames appears in your family tree, there is a strong chance that you have.... |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wessex RootsIf you have one of the following names you could have Wessex Roots -we suggest you trace back your name |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|