Re: MAXEY SURNAME ORIGINS
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In reply to:
MAXEY SURNAME ORIGINS
Debbie 6/22/00
Don't know if you still need this info on the origin of the Maxey name.This is what I have found from the Sweeting lectures at St. Peter's Church in Maxey, England.These took place in 1889.
"And when I take the name of the place first, it is not only because that it is the natural way of beginning, but because also in the name, where all would not expect to find it, we have the earliest and most primitive description of the place. It takes us back to hundreds of years earlier than any mention we can find in old deeds or in history. I believe ever since the place had a name, it has been known as MAXEY. The spelling has indeed been altered, but it is constantly found that while in the course of ages the name of a town or village is spelt in various ways from time to time, yet the way in which a name is pronounced seldom alters, so it is here. The earliest spelling, and indeed the only other way I have found in which the name is written is MAKESEYE, and this would be sounded exactly as we call it now. Now is this name merely a chance name, or has it any meaning? And if it has, can we find out what it does mean. And the truth is that every name, of country, or town, or village, or field has a meaning; and every surname that we have has a meaning, if only we can find it out. Now about the last syllable, EY, There is no manner of doubt. It is an Anglo-Saxon word, and means an island; land surrounded by water. But, you say, Maxey is not an island it is not surrounded by water. This is quite true, but it once was, and its name tells us so. And the fact is, and it is easy to prove it, that the whole of the district of the Fens, and its neighbourhood once formed a shallow bay, six times as large as what we know as the Wash, lying between Lincolnshire and Norfolk: and this shallow bay has been gradually filled up by the deposits of the rivers which flow through the district, as well as by the system of drainage which has carried away the water more rapidly to the sea. The Nene, Ouse, Welland have, in the course of many generations, washed down from the upland country soil and sand, and have converted into dry land what once was water. If you look to the West and South West you can see the first rising ground as we come from the East Coast; and the elevations of Burghley Woods, Ufford, Castor Hanglands and Etton were once on the coastline of this part of England. Let me give you one or two names from the neighbourhood, which show how by degrees the sea has gone away and left us. Holbeach, now 6 miles from the sea; Wisbeach, 7; Landbeach and Waterbeach near Cambridge, further still, all were once on the very coast. Think how many names of villages not far off show they were once islands. Thus we have Eye, Gedney, Thorney, Tilney, Ramsey, Ely, Yaxley, Sawtry, Whittlesey, Manea, Swavesey, Oxney, Coveney and many more. All these places were at one time islands in a great bay. But if you look at a map towards the west, you will find no places ending in EY there. Burghley is no exception, for the last syllable is LEY, a meadow. All the places I have named are east or southeast. What does this tell us? That there were no islands further west and Maxey was the very last island, closest to the mainland. But there was a time when it was not even an island, when the sea washed over the whole parish, and we have proof of this in what we see every day, namely in the gravel soil under our feet. Wherever there is found gravel there must have been the action of water. And in this gravel to this day we continue to find fossils of shells and belemnites, almost by the handful; and these we know must have lived under the sea. The great stone quarries at Barnack, 4 miles off, were formed by the action of the sea; and in any piece of Barnack stone, of which there is abundance to be found in the houses and buildings of this village, you can detect tiny shells. I have brought a piece or two here now, to illustrate this part of our subject, as well as a few fossils, mostly found in my own field.
EY then is an island. About this there is no manner of question. But when we come to ask the meaning of MAX we are not on so certain ground. Various suggestions have been made. Some connect it with an emperor of Rome, Maximinus (AD 235 –7) whose coins have been found here. This seems a very slight foundation on which to build. Coins of his have been found in scores of other places. Some say makes-ey = the made, constructed or artificial island and say it derives its name from the raised mound in the churchyard on which the church is built. This again to me seems unreasonable and after considering as best I can all the explanations that have been attempted, some of which are new to me since I lectured before, I still adhere to the explanation then given, namely, that the word means – the great island. The nearer we get to the coast, in a large bay, the shallower is the sea, and the islands nearest the mainland would naturally be the largest. And this, as it seems to me, makes the idea sensible.
We have now got then to this point. The higher ground in the parish once formed an island, of some considerable extent, in a shallow bay of the sea, which bay has been gradually narrowed in its dimensions to what we now call the wash. Indeed, the same thing is going on at this very day; and land is continually being reclaimed, and brought into cultivation, and added to the adjoining parishes, on the edge of the Wash, near Sutton Bridge and Lynn.
And here I may call your attention to the very low elevation above the sea level at which we dwell. You may have noticed a mark cut on some gateposts and buildings in the parish, like that I now exhibit. This is a government mark, called the Broad Arrow, and is set up by the Ordnance Surveyors to indicate the exact height of the mark above the sea level. So we find the mark on the church tower is 48 ft above the sea, the mark on the gatepost to my gravel pit field only 34 ft; one on the Blue Bell 31ft and one on a post opposite Etton, 27 ft. And so it gets rapidly lower, and in the North Fen, in the drove nearly opposite the Northborough road, is a benchmark, which is only 14 ft above the sea. This point is probably not more than three miles from the church; and we see that that point might have been 10 ft under water, and still the floor of the church would have stood 15 ft above the surface.
I proceed now to the earliest history with which I can connect our village. The boundary to the west is an old Roman road, which is a branch of one of the great roads of the country, called Ermine Street, which ran from London to Lincoln. This road divides into two branches at Castor, where there was an important Roman camp, and also an extensive settlement and town, and a very large manufactory of pottery. Remains of this manufactory have been often found in the district; and it has been conjectured that the Roman settlement at Castor extended for twenty miles up the Nene. It was part of the Roman plan of keeping conquered people in subjection and to employ them in some great public works; and especially about here they were set to bank up the marshland. Tacitus, a great Roman historian, who was born about two years before Saints Peter and Paul were put to death, speaks of this in his history, and describes the Romans as constructing great roads, or the main lines of communications, by their own soldiers, from which roads they could watch the enslaved Britons “ at their task/work of timber felling and fen banking”, and so keep command of the district. This very road of which I speak, running northward from Lolham bridges to West Deeping, which here goes by the name of King Street, was made for this purpose. It was laid more than 1700 years ago as is believed by Lollius Urbicus, proprietor (i.e. governor) in Britain, about AD 144. One of the Roman Emperors, Antoninus Pius, who died AD 161, has left an account of his work in Britain, and in particular has named the towns he went to, and their distances one from another. Thus he tells us he marched from Cambridge to Godmanchester and then the 25 miles to Castor, and then 30 to Ancaster. He must have marched along this very road, and our predecessors in Maxey, toiling as conquered men, must have seen the proud legions of the Roman army, with their eagle standards, marching along within a mile of this room. We have also, undoubted proof of the Romans having been here in Roman coins being dug up from time to time in the fields. I have seen 2 or 3 so found, but on only one of them was I able to read any part of the inscription, and this was a copper coin of Constantine, or Constantinus, who lived early in the 4th century, say 1580 years ago. If any persons have in their possession any old coins found in the place, I should much like to be allowed to see them. This Roman road, King St., of which I have been speaking, had to be carried over the low-lying lands by a series of bridges. These were not often made with arches as we see them now, but had strong stone piers and foundations, and then massive balks of timber laid across. The present Lolham bridges therefore are not of Roman building, though I have little doubt much of the original foundation is left, and many of the original stones though now moved from their first position. And I believe that I can point to one such stone at least. It is on the west side of the second bridge on this side of the railway. It has 5 letters cut very deeply, about 3 inches long. The letters are
PE
CUT
and appear to be part of a longer inscription. But what these letters may mean I cannot pretend to say."
There is, of course, more to this but you get the idea.I read the Anglo Saxon Chronicles after I found this lecture and it ties up nice and neat.
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Re: MAXEY SURNAME ORIGINS
jim standridge 12/18/04