Bramhill Information

Welcome to the Information pages of the Bramhill family section of www.bramhill.net. If you have an interest in the surname or any of the variants (listed below), please read on!

The Bramhill name

Surnames came into being in England from the 12th century when people needed to differentiate one family from another.

Variants of the Bramhill name include Bramill, Brumill, Brummill, Bram(m)all, Bram(m)ah, Bramwell, Bremhell, Brameld, Bramald, Brammar, Brammer and Bramhall.

Never assume that your name has been spelled the same since time immemorial: the illiteracy up to the mid 1800s mean only the most phonetically-simple names have not changed.

The Bramhill name might be derived from bromhaugh, meaning "dweller by the broom-covered nook" - or your Bramhill ancestors might be linked to a village or estate called Bramhall.

In 1881, the name Bramhill was, by and large, restricted to north Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and south Yorkshire. There were few Bramhalls in this area.

In the same year, the name Bramhall was mainly found in Manchester, Cheshire, Staffordshire, and south Lancashire. There were few Bramhills in this area. Derbyshire was a crossover county for the names, but there were more Bramhalls than Bramhills.

This points to the probability that there are at least two or more distinct families - however, if you are a Bramhall or Bramhill now, your name might have been spelt differently previously.

You can see how the names spread out, and became mixed, at this site, which gives a snapshot of surname distribution in 1881 and 1998:

Bramhill 1881
Bramhill 1998
Bramhall 1881
Bramhall 1998

Note that incidences of Bramill and Bramall are too low (under 100 each) to create a map. Please let me know if these links go out of date.

At present, we have six theories which might have led to your Bramhill variant name:

:: the Bramhall estate at Bramhall, Cheshire. In the mists of time, your people may have lived there, see The Manor link on left. You can probably forget hopes of being a member of the landed gentry; it is most likely that your people were villeins or serfs who took their name from the estate.

:: The name is a corruption of Brombell, a common name in Huyton, Liverpool, in Tudor times; the spelling Bramhall appears in Huyton birth registers in 1667 - but there are also Brownebills, Bramwells, Brumels, Broumebills, Broumehills and even a Brahamhall and a Brummilo. Note that my gt gt grandfather was a Bramhall in 1841 and a Bremell in 1861, my great grandfather was a Bramall in 1871 and a Bramhall in 1881, and my grandfather was a Bramel in 1891 , and finally a Bramhill in 1901. Without a doubt, some of the Huyton Brombells will have become Brambells, as in Wilfred Brambell of BBC's Steptoe and Son fame: perhaps DNA testing of Huyton Bramhills and Liverpool Brambells will resolve this one!

:: The Internet Surname Database says the name Brimmell "could be topographical for a person who lived in an area overrun with bramble, or where bramble had been deliberately grown to provide hedging to contain cattle, however the most likely origin is that it was a nickname. This would have been given to a person with a prickly temperament or perhaps the reverse!" Read more

:: land at Burton Pidsea, north Humberside. This was called Bramhulle in the 13th Century, and Braimehills in the 17th century. A Bramhill House, built in the 1850s, occupies the site today.

:: the possibility of a village outside Sheffield, Yorks - where Bramall Lane once led to.

:: a hamlet called Bromhulle, near Whetcombe, Dorset. This was recorded in 891.

Obviously, owing to the geographic distribution of current Bramhill variant families - a wide swathe across Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and the Midlands - the Dorset village is the least likely of the three to have given you the name Bramhill or Bramhall.

The earliest record of the name as a surname is in Worcestershire in 1221 when a Robert de Bramhal is recorded in the Assize rolls during the reign of Henry III. Later that century, there is a Bishop Bramhall in Pontefract, Yorkshire. Skip forward to Tudor times and in 1502 John Bramhall is mayor of Pontefract.