Bolstridge

Recorded in several forms including Bolstridge, Bouldstridge, and Bouldstridge, this is an English locational surname. It originates from a place whose pre 7th century Olde English spelling may have been 'Bula's ridge' or similar, a personal name fairly widely recorded in ancient times, and believed to have been tribal. Alternatively a more simple explanation would have been the 'bulls ridge', perhaps an area specifically set aside for the more dangerous animals. Sadly no such place now appears in any of the gazetters, nor has done for at least two hundred years according to our research. We are therefore left with the proposition that this surname like an estimated five thousand other British surnames, derives from a 'lost' medieval village, of which the only reminder in the 20th century, is the surving surname in its various spellings. What we can say is that the surname is well recorded in the surviving registers of the diocese of Greater London. This is not surprising because when villages 'failed' for whatever reason, plague, war, or changes to agricultural practices, the inhabitants set off for the only place that most of them had ever heard of - London. In this case examples of the surname recording include Thomas Bouldstridge, a witness at St Leonards, Shoreditch, on August 8th 1768, and Sarah Bolstridge, who maried Andrew Gardner at St Botolphs Bishopgate, also city of London, on May 11th 1817.