Origin and Early History

Origin and Early History

1. Origin

The Lockwood name means "enclosed wood" and the surname denotes one whose place of residence or birth was Lockwood. It could be derived from one or more of the following locations:-

From the village of Lockwood (now a suburb of Huddersfield) in the parish of Almondbury, West Riding, Yorkshire.
Located north-east of Cheadle, Staffordshire are Lockwood Hall Farm, Lockwood Road, Lock Wood and Lockwood Waste. Ellastone, a village 5 miles to the east of Cheadle, has Lockwood records of 1305 and 1327 (see below). Ellastone is about 45 miles south of Lockwood.
From an area called Lockwood in Cleveland, North Yorkshire. There is the Lockwood Beck Reservoir and a Lockwood Primary School.
From the Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4 the following origin is given:-

English: habitational name from a place in West Yorkshire, probably named in Old English as ‘enclosed wood’, from loc(a) ‘enclosure’ (see Lock) + wudu ‘wood’. It seems likely that all present-day bearers of the name descend from a single family which originated in this place. There is another place of the same name in Cleveland, first recorded in 1273 as Locwyt, from Old English loc(a) + Old Norse viðr ‘wood’, ‘brake’, but it is not clear whether it has given rise to a surname.

2. Early History

The earliest recorded instances of the name include:-

Henry de Lokwood, Wales (1221)

Henry de Locwode in the Assize Rolls for Staffordshire in 1294

Henry de Locwode, Surrey (1294)

Richard de Locwode Prestwood, (Ellastone?), Staffs in 1305

Alice de Locwode in subsidy roll of Ellastone, Staffs in 1327

Adam de Lokwode in the Feet of Fines for Yorkshire in 1352

Willelmus de Lokewod and Thomas de Lockewod in the Yorkshire Poll tax of 1379

John Lockewode, archer under Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, France, 1417 (TNA E101/51/2) ***

William Lockewode serving under Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, garrison, 1417 (TNA E101/48/17)

Richard Lokwode in Calendar of Letter Books, Kent in 1455

*** may have been at Agincourt

3. West Riding of Yorkshire

By far the most heavily populated area for Lockwoods in the UK is the West Riding of Yorkshire. This is as true today , as it was 700 years ago. A study of West Riding surnames was undertaken by George Redmond in his book "English Surnames Series - Yorkshire West Riding", published in 1973 by Phillimore (ISBN 0 85033 096 3) and the details below, are a summary of the findings for the name of Lockwood mainly in the parish of Almondbury, located just south of Huddersfield.

Mentioned in the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield (1274-1297)
Mentioned as holding land in Almondbury in (1333)
Name is listed in the Inquisition into the Manor of Almondbury (1340)
Name is listed in the Rental of Almondbury (1424)
There are 4 Lockwood families in the Survey of the Manor of Almondbury (1797)
There are 10 Lockwood families in Almondbury in the census of 1851
Using 1965 telephone directories for the West Riding of Yorkshire, there are 128 entries for Bradford which includes Almondbury. Also there are 77 entries for Leeds, 44 for York and 69 for Sheffield.
There are 30 Lockwood families in Almondbury in the Electoral Roll of 1967

4. Spelling variations in the name of Lockwood

There are many different variations of the Lockwood name, usually as a result of the name being spelt incorrectly in parish registers. The following is a list of the variations found so far mostly in IGI and census records:-

LACKWARD	LACKWOOD	LACKWOODS	LACKWONE	LAKEWOD
LAKEWOOD	LAKEWORD	LARKWOOD	LEAKWOOD	LECKWOOD
LEEKWOOD	LICHWOOD	LOCHWOOD	LOCKEDWOOD	LOCKEWOD
LOCKEWODDE	LOCKEWODE	LOCKEWOOD	LOCKEWOODE	LOCKKOD
LOCKUD	LOCKWARD	LOCKWOD	LOCKWODD	LOCKWODDE
LOCKWODE	LOCKWOODE	LOCKWOODS	LOCWODE	LOCWOOD
LOCKWORD	LOKEWOD	LOKEWODE	LOKEWOOD	LOKWODE
LOKWOOD	LOKWOODE	LOOCKWOOD	LOOKWOOD	LOXWOOD

5. Size of One Name Study

In Volume 7 Issue 10 April - June 2002 of the Journal of One-Name Studies, an article by Alan Bardsley titled "How big will your one-name study be?", gave a table of factors to work out the likely size of a one name study. Using some of these factors, I have estimated that there will be about 46,000 - 50,000 Lockwoods in the study between the years 1541 and 1996. Note that this is valid for the UK only.

1841 births = 155 x factor 319 = 49,445

1851 births = 204 x factor 280 = 57,120

1861 births = 185 x factor 253 = 46,805

1871 births = 202 x factor 229 = 46,258

1881 census = 6631 x factor 7 = 46,417