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The ARGALL family are wholly Cornish in its
origins. The earliest inhabitants of the British Isles were entirely
celtic. The Roman invasion, followed by those of the Anglo-Saxons,
Vikings and Normans had very little impact on the celtic fringes of Ireland,
Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, so the bloodline in these areas remained virtually
intact, whilst the rest of England became predominately Anglo-Saxon with some Viking (in the
north) and Norman blood (in the south). The predecessors of the
ARGALL families remained in the celtic south-west,
and those who originally took the name were decended from the
Celtic tribes which inhabited what is now Cornwall,
and
which is located at the extreme south–west of
England,
in the late Bronze Age. This assertion is supported by the results of DNA testing
.
The surname ARGALL been authoritatively
defined by G. Pawley White in his Handbook of Cornish Surnames as
Cornish/Celtic; it means ‘a secluded place,
shelter or retreat’. (In the Welsh Celtic language, the word for
this meaning is ARGEL, and in Breton, a Celtic language spoken by people in the
North–west of France known as Brittany, the word is ARGIL). The Normans,
following their conquest of Britain in the 11th century, introduced surnames
into the British Isles; one such source was the place name from where the
individual came. The origin of the name ARGALL most likely describes the
characteristics of the original settlement, which became the early medieval Cornish
farm village of ARGOLL, and which had probably existed from Saxon
times. So, in common with many other Cornish surnames, the surname
is a locative–based one (i.e. taken from the area).
If the ARGALL name came from Cornwall, from
where did this name originate? The history of the family has to be
set against what was happening in the county of Cornwall in the late medieval
period. Cornwall was a very sparsely–populated region; it is
situated at the south–western extremity
of England and suffered from the situation that it led
nowhere, except the sea, so its development was extremely slow. It
is estimated that the population in the whole of Cornwall at the time surnames
were being introduced in around the 12th/13th centuries was only 35,000 in the year
1200; this population had grown very slowly to around 69,000 by the year
1500. The original Argall families would be numbered amongst this
population size.
Some work remains to be done in the pre–1500
period to substantiate ARGALL family movement, but it would seem that they probably originated in
the place–name of the same. There was a settlement in Cornwall
called ARGEL (ARGOL or ARGOLL – it is spelled in various ways
but is undoubtedly the same place), and this was located within the parish of either
Mabe or St. Budock, (just inland from modern Falmouth) and it is here
that the earliest name references (in the year 1234) can be found. The settlement
(which was probably no larger than a farm with workers' cottages, has long
since disappeared, but the name is perpetuated in that area by its usage in
farmsteads: there is still an Argal Home Farm, and another
farmstead called Higher Argal.
However, it seems that a neighbouring area of
Lower Argal also once existed; it was recorded in 1748 but it was
probably in existence long before this; sometimes it was called Argal
Wyn in the Cornish language, or White Argal. Richard
Thomas completed a survey of Lower Argal in 1827. It showed all 61
fields with their individual names and states: arable, pasture (wet and rough)
and furze (i.e. gorse); furze was used for burning as a fuel. There
was a Mill Tenement of 7 acres, 15 perches, mentioned and also a place called
Little Argal
of 3 acres.
The grand total of the area was 99 acres, 0 roods and 26 perches.
The farm was bounded by land owned by the Bishop of Exeter on one side and the
river on the other side.
This river was dammed in 1939 and became
known as the Argal and College Reservoir (or Argal Dam), and was built to provide a water supply to Falmouth; it is now
called Argal
Lake . Even as late as 1938, the large scale 6
inches to the mile Ordnance Survey maps of Cornwall were still marking Argal
Mill, Argall hamlet, Argal Villa, as well as Little
Argal (almost
certainly what was formerly Lower Argal) and Higher Argal ,
around the area occupied by the Reservoir. All these references recall the site
of the earlier location of the village of Argal, within the Budock
area. The 1827 survey resulted in the publication by C & J
Greenwood, Map Makers of Regent Street, Pall Mall, London, of a map; the
spelling of the location in that map is ARGLE but this is just another variation
of the same place.
What is clear from all this evidence, however, is that there were
concentrations of people with the ARGALL surname in the Helford drowned valley,
south of Falmouth that is now part of the Kerrier District of Cornwall, from the
13th/14th centuries right through until the 20th century. Indeed, an early
reference can be found to Walter Orgoull in 1296. This is followed
by another reference to an Osbert Argel, recorded in Budock in AD1327; these are
the earliest references to the name in a person.
A Will dated 1307 lies in the Public Records Office in London of a
knight, Richard de Argle who left large estates in what is now
Somersetshire. However, it is unlikely that he had any links to
Cornwall, or was connected to the ARGALL families there; current evidence
suggests that there is no link from the modern Argall families to him. (He was
probably a descendant of the 11th century Norman invaders, importing his name
from Brittany).
These various ARGALL family groups in Cornwall probably developed
separately and independently, with different (and unrelated) lives progressing
in parallel along the sides of the Helford River. The remaining
documentary evidence seems to reflect this. Some of these lines died
out, but two main strands survived into modern recorded (16th Century) history –
that of a wealthy St Keverne family who later developed in London and the east
of England, and that of a family which developed in the Penwith area of western
Cornwall.
Ian Argall © 2006 - 2008
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