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 and 13th centuries when people needed to differentiate one family from another.

Never assume that your name has always been spelt the same: general illiteracy up to the mid 1800s means only the most phonetically-simple names have not changed.

Variants of the Bramhill name include Bramill, Brumill, Brummill, Bram(m)all, Bram(m)ah, Bramwell, Bremhell, Brameld, Bramald, Brammar, Brammer, Brimhall, Brambell, Brimwell and Bramhall. I have come across two instances of the name Bromilow or Bramelow becoming Bramel.

Note that the name Brombell was common 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 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 end any doubt.

Bramall Hall

Many if not most Bramhill families are descended from the Bromales who held Bramall Hall, Cheshire, for 200 years from the 1100s. Our connection to the Carrington family, our DNA cousins, is likely to date from this time. Although the "Bramhall of Bramall Hall" male line died out in the 1300s, it is likely that the name continued through a collateral branch of the family or via the estate's villeins and serfs. Certainly, John Bramhall and John Bramhall, senior and junior, of Ripon and Pontefract, claimed descent"from the ancient family of Bramhalls, of Bramhall in Cheshire" when they applied for the regranting of a Bramall coat of arms in the 1628. The date may be significant and has given rise to The Bramhall Mystery. We are looking at any DNA link between members of the Davenport family and Bramhill variants.

Other options are:

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

:: 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.

:: a village outside Sheffield, Yorks..

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

:: 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

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.

The geographic distribution of current Bramhill variant families is concentrated in a wide swathe across Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and the Midlands, and Bramhill variants spread to all corners of the former British empire.