Culcheth

Recorded as Culcheth, Cultcheth, Colchett, Colchot, and possibly others, this Welsh looking surname is in fact English and locational. It originates from a village called Culcheth, said to be thirteen miles south west of Manchester, and in the county Lancashire. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names it was first recorded in the Pipe Rolls of the county in the year 1201 as Culchet and then in 1246 as the near modern spelling of Kulcheth. The place name is believed to have Ancient British or certainly Olde English antecedents, and to mean back wood, or perhaps a shelter in a back wood, from the pre 5th century "cil" meaning back or corner and "coed", a wood. This is an interesting translation if correct, not only because it is unclear what back wood actually means, but because there is only one place now actually recorded as Backwood, and that is not too far away in the county of Cheshire. The surname is well recorded in the surviving church registers of Lancashire from at least Elizabethan times. These examples include Gylbert Culchetch at Leigh, on September 5th 1565, and Edwardi Culcheth at Ormskirk, on January 1st 1671, the latter in the reign of King Charles 11nd (1660 - 1685.