Kenborough Prior, a girls name!

Findem

The Fearless One. Rest in Peace.
This strange first name caught my eye so I thought I'd share it with you..

1622
Kenborough ye daughter of Thomas & Kenborough Prior baptised 6 Jan 1622 Sawbridgeworth.

Sawbridgeworth baptisms, marriages & burials 1558 - 1657 Herts Record Office ref # D/P 98/1/1 on FMP Sawbridgeworth Composite, image 41 of 146. Located near the bottom of the left hand page.

Fortunately the vicar Abdias Tuer wrote this one pretty clearly so I'm confident I've got the name right. It's more like the name of a place than a person's name, I wonder if she will name a daughter Kenborough. If anyone has her for an ancestor I doubt they will have the dilemma of sorting out which Kenborough Prior is theirs, I doubt there's any others, at least not around the same time.

Yet another one for the Robots methinks.
 
Out of curiosity I did a general search on Ancestry just using Kenborough as a first name. It was pretty popular. One caught my eye...Kenborough Fairy. !
They have over 9 million results for it...needless to say I didn't look at them all, but yours' was 2nd on the list! ( Several are mentioned more than once. ;) )
 
I noticed a girl called Fleetwood the other day, daughter of a fisherman. (Fleetwood is an old fishing port in Lancashire).

Nowadays, with the current trend of naming babies after towns and cities, no one would bat an eyelid, but I suppose it was unusual back then. The descendants of these children born in the 2000s are going to have a nightmare researching them in newspaper archives. I know - my maiden name is that of a big industrial town. :rolleyes:
 
Out of curiosity I did a general search on Ancestry just using Kenborough as a first name. It was pretty popular. One caught my eye...Kenborough Fairy. !
They have over 9 million results for it...needless to say I didn't look at them all, but yours' was 2nd on the list! ( Several are mentioned more than once.

Well I'll be, I thought people with Kenborough as a first name would be rarer than hen's teeth. It's common place to see people with names of villages, towns or cities as surnames but I really thought Kenborough would be rare as a first name.
 
I noticed a girl called Fleetwood the other day, daughter of a fisherman. (Fleetwood is an old fishing port in Lancashire)

And let us not forget the group Fleetwood Mac, :) now I'm getting dangerously near going off piste. ;) :D
 
Out of curiosity I tried a Road Atlas, Google and a Gazetteer for Kenborough and it seems there is nowhere in the UK called Kenborough, although back in the 1600s there could have been. Google brought up a load of companies in Ontario Canada using that name and some in the UK.
 
Well I'll be, I thought people with Kenborough as a first name would be rarer than hen's teeth. It's common place to see people with names of villages, towns or cities as surnames but I really thought Kenborough would be rare as a first name.

Most were in the 1600's! Must have meant something then.
 
Couldn't find a township of Kenborough, but two mentions of a parish called Bro-Kenborough.

First was in the Gentleman's Magazine Vol 87 (1800) in Ecclesiastical Preferments:

Rev. John Nicholas, LLB, Weftport V with the Chapeleries of Charlton and Bo-kenborough, Annexed, Wilts.

Second was in the History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, Collected, ......, Vol 1 (I didn't see the year!!)

In the section headed "Bath-Easton" (which, it says, is a parish 2 miles eastward of the city of Bath) the Roman Foffe Road is described. After it quits the town of Cirencester it does a few things like dividing the parishes of Crudwell and Afhley, tootles along further and "bifects the parishes of Shipton Moigne and Bro-Kenborough". An adjoining parish of Eafton-Grey is also mentioned and the ruins of the ancient city of Whitewalls.


Don't know if it gets you any closer to finding a township way back then, Derek, but it does seem to point to a general area of possibilities.
 
Maybe you should ignore that last post after all, Findem. Seems there is still a parish of Brokenborough (they've dropped the hyphen, bless them) with a small township of the same name which is not far from Malmesbury.

Oh well.
 
Luckily for me she is not related, I've exhausted all my avenues of search so I'll leave it where it is now. :)
 
How about this:
09-Mar 1768
Parish Buryan, St., Cornwall
Forename Kenneth
Surname WALLIS
Age age 102
Notes Henborough WALLIS in 3rd Register
Transcriber Notes Hoblyn's transcriptions
Kenborough Bone married Nicholas Wallis(h) at Gulval in 1713
It's not a name you can easily forget!
And nor is Brokenborough, a lovely little village where several of my Brooke ancestors are buried!
 
Back
Top