My surname has pre-8th century origins. It derives from a now 'lost' medieval hamlet whose translation was 'the clear (glaed) stream (waella)'. Over 5,000 medieval villages dissapeared after the 14th century as a result of plague, war and agricultural clearance following the Elizabethan enclosure acts that dispossessed the 'commoners'. The surname is well recorded in London from the 16th century, but quite sparsely elsewhere. On 15 April 1635, Aymes Gladwell aged 16 years, was in the party who 'imbarqued in ye Increase of London, Robert Lea Master' - bound for the New England colony of Virginia. This Amyes Gladwell was one of the earliest settlers.

The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Margaret Gladwell dated 6th February 1591.

I can trace my Gladwell family tree back to the 1760s when my family originated in Suffolk before they moved south into Essex and then over the River Thames to Kent and Gravesend in the late eighteenth century. Today there are still several families in Suffolk, Essex and Kent with the name of Gladwell although I know of none elsewhere.

Do you know anyone with the surname of Gladwell?