Stockbridge

Recorded as Stackbridge, Stockbridge and Stockbredg, this is an English and sometimes Scottish locational surname. It originates from one or all the places called Stockbridge or Stocksbridge including Stockbridge in the county of Hampshire, Stockbridge and Stocksbridge in the county of Yorkshire, and over the border into Scotland, Stockbridge district in the city of Edinburgh, Stockbridge in Berwickshire, and Stockbriggs in Lanarkshire. There is also a "lost" medieval village and now just a hamlet called Stockbridge in the county of Sussex. All have the same meaning of the place (stoc) by the causeway (brigg), and presumably referred to a marshy area in pre Norman times which was crossed by a raised section of roadway. Stockbridge in Hampshire is first referred to in the pipe rolls of the county in 1227, during the long reign of King Henry 111rd of England, (1216 - 1272). Locational surnames tend to be either names given to the original lord of the manor and his descendants, or to people who at some stage left their homes to move somewhere else, and were thereafter forever identified by being called after their first village. In this case the surname is well recorded in the city of London. Early examples include Annes Stockbridge who married Symond Frenchborne at St Giles Cripplegate on February 5th 1575, and Antony Stockbredg, ghiven as being a christening witness at the church of St Stephen Wallbrook, on February 8th 1663.