Sneezum's Finale?

 

No research done on the date of the
acquisition of the family crest.
But it IS impressive.

Sneezum's Corner, Fore Street, Ipswich 1900

New to Bury St Edmunds in 2022, I was charmed to stumble across a very large shop in the middle of town, named, Sneezum’s, I silently considered the name must be one of those quaint Suffolkian words with rural roots in the long ago. This week I went into the shop in search of a watch battery and discovered, as I did so, that the shop, on two floors and occupying a large area selling a wide range of goods from jewellery to well, almost anything, was closing. A query elicited the news that the owners were retiring and that a Sneezum's had graced the town centre in various streets since 1874! The longevity of one family owning shops in one small town for a century and a half, is impressive but even more wonderful was the name which I decided must be much older than one hundred and fifty years. And so I have wandered among fables of early mediaeval naming based on the ways ordinary people lived. It is about modest citizens, their humble social customs, and their astonishingly lengthy effects on English social and linguistic development.

The Domesday Book and its creator

Yet again, the Domesday Book, 1086, effectively the first census in the country, is hugely important, its name, Domesday, indicating that William (the Conqueror) intended that those holders registered would hold the land until the end of time. Before the coming of the Normans in 1066, individuals were known in their small villages by their first, and only, names, or possibly by their nicknames. 

Mediaeval arrowsmith or fletcher,
both subsequent surnames

Very gradually, the 

population grew; people moved beyond villages and small towns, and more than the one name to distinguish one man from another, became essential. This social movement was slowly developing before the Normans invaded and within two years after the Norman conquest, the demands of the Domesday Book speeded up the process and it became imperative for each person to have a second name, with fines of property and belongings to enforce the law, involved. People had to supply an individual second name and many simply chose what was familiar to them; which family they belonged to; where they lived; what they did; personal characteristics or achievements. SO the first surnames as such in England were ‘John, son of Thomas’; ‘Peter the baker’. As time went on, these identifying second names were slightly shortened and surnames began to emerge, such as Peter Baker; John Thompson. The most common surname actually became Smith from the highly visible occupational names such as Blacksmith although some ‘Smith’ names remained entire as in my mother’s maiden name of Arrowsmith.

David Beckham whose mediaeval
forebears must have hailed from
the Norfolk village!

There were other forms of surnames based on

West Beckham
 village sign

a) Location of birth, e.g. Beckham in Norfolk.

b) Personal characteristics, e.g. Brown from brown hair; Black from black hair; Redhead from red hair; White from pale complexion. Others were statements of the obvious:  Fairchild; Armstrong;  Goodbody.

c) Patronage, e.g. Hickman from Hick’s man.

d) Estate, e.g. Windsor; Cavendish.

Many surnames related to the male lineage and family roots. The surname of Adkins means Adam’s family and names ending with ‘cock’ usually indicate ‘son of’. Adcock is Adam’s son; Alcock is Allen’s son. The word ‘cock’ is an Old English ‘tap’ and to have a son was of the utmost importance in Anglo-Saxon society; thus, when a baby was born, everyone quickly looked to see it it had ‘a little tap’ to check if it was a  boy.

The oldest recorded English surname is 'Hatt'; it is from East Anglia and indicates a hat-maker

Mediaeval hat-maker

In Bury, in the mediaeval grid, there is a Hatter Street. Hatt was an Anglo-Saxon family surname, mentioned in a Norman transcript and identified as a regular name throughout the region. Over subsequent centuries, surnames were registered in a variety of official documents such as the Hundred Rolls, the Assize Courts, land transactions, Royal Charters and so on. But it was the ever-inventive Normans who brought over the idea of hereditary surnames through their hereditary tax system which rewarded those who made wills indicating the family’s intentions regarding land and other possessions. Although not legally required, it paid the Anglo-Saxons to will anything they owned to their offspring otherwise, the government was entitled by law, to snatch most of it. And so this process focussed on the necessity of hereditary surnames. Two centuries later, the poll tax, first levied in 1275 and continuing under different names until the 17th century, taxed people a percentage of the assessed value of their movable goods. The sweep of history continued its demands!

Rose and Crown, Snettisham

But, to return to the splendidly-named Sneezums. The place name Sneezum comes from a local pronunciation of Snettisham in Norfolk. Recorded as Snetesham in 1086, probably deriving from an Old English personal name, ‘belonging to ‘Sneti’ or ‘Snaetes’ with the addition of ‘ham’, Old English ‘village homestead’. The name translates literally as ‘Snipe’s Farm’ from the Old English ‘snite ham’ and almost certainly is a reference to an area where snipe abounded. The first recorded spelling of the family name is that of Richard de Snetesham, dated 1161, in the pipe rolls of the county of Norfolk during the reign of Henry 11, 1154-1189. Various spellings of the name Snettisham, Stnetsham, Sneezum, Sneezam, Snesham, Sneitisham, Snetsham and Sneegum, are scattered through different manuscripts and documents, with instances of two different versions in the one script! In fact the surname is descended from the tenant of the lands of Snettisham, William de Warrene who was under-tenant to the Bishop of Bayeux, all recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.This large and important village contained 7 mills, 3 fisheries and 440 sheep.

Curiously, although this is one of the earliest surnames recorded, there is little mention in official documents of Sneezum or its equivalents, with a notable scarcity in Norfolk, between the 12^th and 18^th centuries although we do have a John Sneezham recorded at Castle Hedingham Independent Church in Essex as patriarch of a large family and his son, Jos Sneezam, as having married Emma Staples at Mundon in Essex on December 18^th 1830 with grandson, Jos Sneezam, being christened a year later. Between 1861 and 1891, the Sneezum family name was found in both England and Scotland and by 1891, Suffolk had 23 Sneezum families which was roughly 42% of all Sneezums recorded in the UK at that time.

As this little research was prompted by news of the intended closure of Sneezum's in Bury, we  must

Sneezums, Bury St Edmunds

 mention the relatively modern family references too. The Sneezums ran pawnbroker shops in Ipswich for over a century from the 19th to the 20th. In 1925 there were four members of the family working in Ipswich as pawnbrokers at different sites: Arthur in Norwich Road; Raymond in Elm Street; William at 14-20 Fore Street and Henry at 89-91 Fore Street. Below are three paintings of Sneezum premises in Ipswich by William John Leggett (1856-1936) although none of the ‘fine house close to the church of St Mary-at-Quay’ where this well-known Ipswich family lived. Their businesses eventually included jewellery, pawnbroker’s, clothier’s, cameras, sports gear, bicycles and fireworks! By the 1940s, pawnbroking was largely a thing of the past and the Sneezums moved up-market as jewellers and goldsmiths. And it was in the 1950s that Henry and Raymond became dealers in cameras, photographic equipment, sports outfitters and dealers in tools and musical instruments.

Fore Street, Ipswich
Painting of a Sneezum's branch in Ipswich by
William John Leggett. 1856-1936

A Second Sneezum's in Ipswich by Leggett

A third Leggett painting of another Sneezum's store
in Ipswich

Post Script
To underline the 'sweep of history' proposition, this is a 
photo of the Poll Tax riots in 1990 in protest against
the unfair imposition by Maggie Thatcher.