The origin of the Cuddeford surname
Have you ever wondered where the Cuddeford surname comes from? It is an unusual name and comparatively rare. Many English surnames end in ‘-ham’, ‘-ton’, ‘-ley’, or ‘-ford’, and they are usually place-names. We can be reasonably sure that Cuddeford is the name of a place. The question is, where is it? If you search for a place called Cuddeford, you will find it does not exist today. However, place names do get changed over the centuries and there is a place in Devonshire which appears in the Domesday Book as Codeford. In the 13th Century it had changed to Cuddeford and it is now called Coddiford. It is a tiny group of farms and cottages near Cheriton Fitzpaine, a few miles west of the road from Exeter to Tiverton.
How did we come to have the name of an obscure medieval hamlet as our surname? It is most unlikely that we shall ever discover the true circumstance. My guess is that, at some time between about 1250 and 1400, a man left Coddiford to seek a life elsewhere. Back home, he did not need a surname. Everyone was known by his or her baptismal name, Thomas, John, Mary or Elizabeth, for example. But, when our wanderer went as a stranger into a larger community, that was not enough. He may have been given a nickname or, in this case, the name of his birthplace. Over a period of about 150 years, others may have left home and, likewise, been given the same surname. These may or may not have been related to each other. In any case. there could not have been very many of them.
Where did they go? Records show a few in London but the rest did not go very far. From about 1500 very nearly all the Cuddefords lived in half a dozen parishes to the west of Exeter and the river Exe, all within about 20 miles of Coddiford. And there they remained, generation after generation with very little movement until about 1800 when a few drifted off to the bigger towns such as Plymouth and to London. When the railways came and travel was easier, more of them moved away from Devonshire and have continued to do so ever since. Now there are Cuddefords all over England, in Scotland, Australia, Canada and the USA. Wherever we live, we all owe our surname to those medieval Englishmen who left Coddiford in beautiful Devonshire to seek a living elsewhere.
Thomas Cuddeford
The heading on this page shows a facsimile of the signature of Thomas Cuddeford. It is taken from the parish register of Newton St Cyres in Devonshire near Exeter. He wrote it on 5th May 1767, the day of his wedding to Mary Brown. Thomas was born in the village on 20th September 1744 and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to Mr Ellis the village butcher. It appears that Thomas and Mary, with the first two of their children, eventually left that part of Devonshire and travelled to Plymouth, where their family increased to eight children. Their four sons became butchers. Some of their descendants live in Plymouth to the present time.