Prigmore

This very unusual surname is recorded in the spellings of Prigmor, Pridgmore, and Prigmore. It is English and locational, although no such place in any of the surname spellings is to be found in the gazetters of the British Isles for the past three centuries. This suggest that either the place has completely disappeared, the fate of an estimated five thousand sites since the 14th century, or perhaps the spelling of the surname has changed to the point where its association with the place of origin is not apparent. Both are possible but as the name spelling has remained almost exactly the same since at least Stuart times, and is so recorded in the early surviving church registers of the diocese of Greater London, it suggests that we are dealing with a "lost" village. Locational surnames are by their very nature, usually "from" names. that is to say names given to people after they left their orginal homesteads to move somewhere else. The somewhere else was often London. In the registers for the year of 1627 we find the recording of Richard Prigmore whose daughter Dorothy was christened on December 28th at the church of St Michael Bassishaw. The name is then recorded several times until at the same church on June 14 1635 we have the 'new' spelling in the recording of Edward Pridgmore, given as being the son of Richard Pridgmore, and a good example of the laxity of early 17th century spelling.