Clutram

Recorded as Clutram, Clutheram, Clutterham and possibly others, this is an English locational surname. It presumably originates from a place with one of the surname spellings, but nothing like it other than the villages of Clutton in Somerset and Clutton in Cheshire, would suggest any relationship. Clutton translates as 'The farm (or settlement) on a hill' which on the same basis Clutterham would be 'The house by the farm on a hill'. Over the past five centuries it is estimated that some three thousand former villages and even small towns have totally disappeared from the landscape of the British Isles, and this would seem to be one of them. The reasons are complex, but changes in agricultual practices, land drainage, coatsal erosion, growing urbanisation, and more exotic causes such as the Great Plagues and even war, have played a part. This surname is quite well recorded in the surviving church registers of the city of London. Examples include Thomas Clutterham who married Honor Bull on August 22nd 1804, at St Stephen Walbrooke, and Daniel Clutram, a christening witness at St George in the East, Stepney, on September 24th 1827.