Brighton and Beyond

A History of the Cowley Family

If you have read the ‘How it started’ page you will know that my inspiration for researching our family history came from my uncle, Roy Cowley.  Roy had done much of the groundwork and I still have his original tree which goes back to the mid to late 1700s.

Roy’s tree was my starting point and, thanks to the proliferation of internet based information, it was relatively easy to check the bulk of Roy’s tree and, indeed, add to it.  However, he has some branches in his tree which I have still not yet been able to verify.

One thing that quickly became clear to me was that there are several different variations of our surname - Cowley, Coley, Coaley, and Cooley are the spellings that I have come across during my research.  Whether these variations are a just a “normal”  evolution of the name, whether they result from illiteracy and the inability of  our ancestors to read and write in the 18th century, or whether there are just errors in transcription from original documents it is impossible to know.

The complexity of the research task is illustrated by searching for the name Cowley in Sussex.  For the period 1700-1900 there are 144 documented matches in census, baptism, and burial records and, no doubt, there are many more which have not yet been found and transcribed.  Any one of these could be linked to our own “branch” of the family.  Much of the information cannot be checked electronically and, one of these days, I will have to abandon the electronic research and take a trip to Brighton to try and check paper records.

Researching our Family History

Origins of the Name ‘Cowley’

The following text is from a web page on the origin of the name Cowley - use of English and grammar corrected!  I have not been able to check the validity of the research but reproduce it here for interest.  (The picture to the left, from the same web site, is allegedly the Cowley coat of arms but who or what it relates to I have no idea!  But who am I to renounce our armorial bearings!)

“This name is of English locational origin from any of the several places thus called. Cowley in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Devonshire and Staffordshire (recorded respectively as Cufanlea, Couela, Couelegh and Covelav in Anglo-Saxon Records for the various counties dated 949 to 1066) derive their names from the Old English pre 7th Century ‘Cufan Leah’ meaning 'the wood or clearing (leah) of ‘Cufa’ the byname form ‘Cufl’ meaning block or stump.  Cowley in Gloucestershire, appearing as Kulege in the Domesday Book of 1086, is so called from the Old English ‘Cu-leah’ meaning ‘clearing where cows grazed’.  Two in Derbyshire recorded as ‘Collei’ in the Domesday Book, derive their first element from the Old English ‘col’ meaning ‘charcoal’ - hence ‘clearing where charcoal was burned’.  Finally, Cowley in Middlesex translates as ‘leah in a cofa’  (recess or creek).

The first recorded spelling of the family name is that of Osbert de Couela in 1167 in 'The Pipe Rolls of Oxfordshire', during the reign of King Henry II, The Builder of Churches, 1154 - 1189.“

  Page updated - 10 June 2019

Distribution of ‘Cowleys’

The map to the left shows the number of Cowleys resident in England and Wales in 1891.  (This is actually the only distribution map that I have been able to find thus far.)

I was surprised to see that, given our own associations with Brighton, the highest concentration of Cowleys was actually in the North West, with a small pocket in the London area.

According to information that I found on the web the current distribution of  the ‘Cowley’ name is as shown in the table below.  

Number of Cowley families in England & Wales - 1891

438-874

147-437

1-146

0

This information perhaps creates more questions than it answers!  We know that our branch of the family has it’s origins in the Brighton area, at least back in to the mid 18th century but where did they originate - the Isle of Man perhaps? Why did they settle in Brighton?

The quest continues!