1. A Name From The Landscape

About the Author

The author and administrator of this site is Sam Sykes, a historian and livestock farmer living on a small farm in the south-west Yorkshire Pennine uplands. Sam completed a MA in Local History, Literature & Culture at Sheffield University in the mid-1980’s, studying with the late Professor David Hey and Professor John Widdowson. He has contributed articles to several books and journals on subjects relating to medieval landscapes and the people who lived in them. He also writes occasional articles about the management of traditional upland landscapes and rare breeds of livestock.

Scope of the Study

This study is hosted by the Guild of One Name Studies. It aims to generate research into the origins, development and dispersion of the surname Sykes. Focussing initially upon occurrences of the name in medieval England up to the seventeenth century. It explores various theories of the origins and variations of this name whilst critically re-examining the documentary evidence available.

Whilst Sykes is now a global name it clearly originated in northern England. Linguistically it belongs to the old Scandinavian tradition that contributed so many place names to northern England. For this reason this website is focussed particularly upon that region, although future developments may broaden that scope.

This is not the history of a specific genetic line of Sykes but an attempt to understand how the surname developed and what caused it to either remain in particular locations or spread to pastures new. The medieval political economy was based upon an individual’s relationship to the land on which they lived and the master to whom they owed allegiance. These ties severely restricted most people’s ability to move beyond fairly restrictive locality boundaries, as a result the distribution of many family names in the sixteenth century is still indicative of the origins and allegiances of that family in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when surnames were first becoming commonplace. By the seventeenth century the shape of Britain was changing. Medieval settlement patterns, largely based upon feudal structures, were diminishing in the face of growing urbanisation, increased national and international trade and an expanding industrialised economy. This created unprecedented freedom of movement for individuals which distort the earlier pattern. These structural changes were supported by new administrative systems recording the activities of ordinary people, such as baptisms, marriages and burials recorded in the parish registers; wills and court records became more plentiful and the Hearth Taxes of 1666-72 compiled the nearest thing we have to a national census at this period. These records form the traditional baseline for family historians, but for many they also mark the end of the beginning as promising evidence trails hit a dead end prior to the emergence of parish records. This study ends in the seventeenth century, overlapping with the emergence of the new types of records. Hopefully the profiles uncovered will offer potential links to modern records which may be informative for those tracing back particular branches of Sykes. It therefore offers a good vantage point from which to look in the rear view mirror where the pattern of medieval settlements was still evident.

As always with historical studies our evidence is limited to those items that chance and circumstance have left to posterity. The aim is to be as comprehensive as possible, but inevitably some discoveries will lead to conjecture. W.G. Hoskins once wrote there comes a point when the evidence stops but imagination can make great leaps. There is room on this site for both fact and conjecture, provided we distinguish between them, remembering always the we don’t know what we don’t know!