My BROCKWELL study began more than thirty years ago.  My wife and I had been looking into our ancestry for a couple of years but had not got very far.  She had found that her maternal grandmother's maiden name was BROCKWELL  and for some reason that I can't remember we decided to look further into that particular name.  We made numerous visits to scour the BMD records in St Catherine's House, humping the heavy volumes off the shelves and collecting all the BROCKWELL entries that we could find.  We also collected as much census data as we could find, this involving looking through what seemed like endless reels of microfilm.  Gradually we built up a set of families sharing the same surname, but not necessarily related.

We made contact with some others interested in the same name, in particular a young lady named Rebecca Brockwell-Parker who had been investigating her own family and who had been circulating a newsletter to interested parties. Together, in 1994,  we decided to put the arrangements on to a more formal footing and formed the Brockwell Family History Society.  This was a fairly small group but keen, and we pooled our information to produce a list of all the Brockwells that we knew of, and their relationships where they were known.  We produced a small quarterly magazine, the Brockwell Review, containing our findings and spiced up with anecdotes gleaned from newspaper reports and the like.  We held meetings and family gatherings in Brockwell Park in London which we thought was a fitting place, anthough we never found a family connection to the place!

At this stage we had not come across the Guild of One-Name Studies but once we heard about it, we just had to join.  This put our study onto a rather more structured basis and pointed us towards collecting data from countries other than the UK.  We found that the name, although never common, had spread widely across the globe.

Alas, the Brockwell Family History Society folded in 2017 as our membership had dwindled due to death and illness, and there was no young blood coming in to take over.  A set of copies of The Brockwell Review was lodged with the Society of Genealogists and a copy of our computerised records with the GOONS.

The main recent variant of BROCKWELL is BROOKWELL, but in past times there have been many others.  Brockall/Brockoll and Brockle were quite widespread, also Brockhull/Brockhall, Brockwill. and Brockholes.  I suspect that most of the variants were, in the past, pronounced something like "Brockle".

The occurance of the variants varies with time, most of the Brockhull, Brockle and Brockwills being common in (particularly) Kent and Essex, the spelling BROCKWELL being quite rare before 1600, but generally these had disappeared by the early 1700s when the later spelling was almost universal.  The variant BROOKWELL first appeared in 1688 but subsequently expanded to be about 13% of the total.

The fact that some at least of the early names morphed into BROCKWELL is shown by two documents from Kent in the 1630s, relating to the same individual.  In one he is described as Thomas BROCKHALL als BROCKWELL and in the second Thomas BROCKHULL als BROCKWELL.

In recent times there has been an increase in names such as Brock(h)ill, Brockel(l) that had earlier almost died out but these do not seem to have any connection to this study.  Brockley is also a reasonably common name but again I have found no connection in most cases, though there are a few where they do join up. One family had some children recorded in the Parish Register as BROCKWELL and some as BROCKLEY.  Very confusing for the genealogist!

It is difficult to pinpoint a geographical origin for the name.  There seem to have been occurances of the name in different parts of the country that we have not been able to positively connect, though the majority of early (16th century) BROCKWELLs were in Kent and Essex, the latter spreading into Suffolk.  These could well be connected at some time in the past, but others in Devon and Wiltshire may have been distinct families.

The origin of the name could be derived from a place name signifying "badger spring" or badger hole", from Old English brocc + wella or brocc + hol, but this is by no means certain.  Significantly there doesn't seem to any family connection to places currently called Brockwell in London, Derbyshire and Somerset.

Another possibility is that it is connected to the family de Broc who had property in Kent following the Norman Conquest, as this name later became de Brockhull- see below.

The earliest occurance in Parish Records that we have found was a birth in 1544 in Rodmersham, Kent, and we have a Will from 1510, but there are much earlier occurances in documents such as Patent Rolls.  A Richard de BROCKHILLE was mentiond in a document in 1265 and there are many records from the 14th and 15th centuries.

The de Broc family had an estate in Kent known as Brockhill or Brockhull, and also Saltwood Castle that was given to Sir Ranulf de Broc by King Henry II. A cousin of Sir Ranulf, Robert de Broc, was one of the knights implicated in the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170.  Subsequent generations used the name de Brockhull and several of these had important positions.  Sir Thomes de Brockhull was Sheriff of Kent and his son, also Sir Thomas, was Lieutenant of Dover Castle in the reign of King Edward III.

I have not found any BROCKWELLs of high status, unless the de Broc/deBrockhull families mentiond above are connected (not proven), and many were agricultural labourers but there were some in trades, professions and business. One London family were silversmiths, and their silver is quite collectable. Related to them were some London merchants.  Another family from Nottinghamshire were in the business of parchment making, while a Surrey family were initially builders but some went into the business of glue and size making - a very malodourous ocupation but one that was very profitable!

A couple of well-known cricketers were BROCKWELLs, George playing for Surrey and being instrumental in the development of the Oval cricket ground, while William played both for Surrey and England including in Test Matches against Australia.

There were quite a few crooks in the family, as shown by reports in newspapers and records of the Old Bailey.  Most of their misdemeanours were of a minor  nature though, even the two who were transported (one to Van Dieman's Land, the other to Bermuda) had committed crimes that would probably not even have warranted a prison sentence now.

The name BROCKWELL is not very rare, but it is certainly not common being ranked 8165th most common in the 1851 Census of England and Wales.  We have about 5500 UK births in our records, plus several hundred overseas - principally Australia, Canada and the USA.

In the 1841 census there are 339 BROCKWELLs and 41 BROOKWELLs. This rose to a peak in 1911 with 1063 BROCKWELLs and 135 BROOKWELLs. The numbers reduced in 1921 to 899 and 116 respectively, some of the loss being casualties of the First World War in which 40 servicemen died. In 1939 933 Brockwells and 168 BROOKWELLS are listed, though the 100 year rule means that this does not include those born after 1925 but alive today.

In recent times, from the mid 19th century onwards, the biggest concentration of BROCKWELLs was in London due to the mass migration towards the capital at that time.  Earlier, there were significant concentrations in Suffolk and Kent with others in Surrey, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and a scattering elsewhere. 

There was a sizeable group in Devon who apparently disappeared around 1650, but I suspect they originated from elsewhere, possibly London.

The  latest available sources showed 1293 BROCKWELLs living in the USA, 83 in Canada, 421 in Australia and 40 in New Zealand.

I have compresensive lists of all England and Wales BROCKWELL births, marriages and deaths from 1837 to 2006 and a good collection of certificates.

I have census entries from 1841 to 1921.

Also I have a database of parish records from the 16th century up to 1837 when Civil Rgistration commenced.

Where possible, the individuals have been put into family groups of which there were originally twelve. For most records from the 19th century onwards  nearly everyone has been accounted for but earlier records have proved much more difficult to allocate to a family group. From Parish Records and DNA I have managed to link up some of the groups but there still remain many that have no connection so perhaps the name did arise independently in several places.

BROOKWELLs have been given their own group that I haven't so far managed to give much structure to.

I have a quite compresensive set of military records, mostly from the First World War ,  and also some seaman's records.

I have a good collection of newspaper cuttings 

My records for other countries are more sketchy but I have some data for the USA and Australia.

While the BROCKWELL FHS was active, we did a small  amount of Y-DNA research to see if the families of our members were related. Of course for Y-DNA we needed male contributors so our pool of candidates was limited, but we did manage to connect three of our groups together. The connection though was earlier than any of our paper records showed. We also found that two members who were connected on paper were not related by DNA - the dreaded non parental event (illegitimacy, adoption, re-marriage of mother or any other reason for a name change).

We didn't manage to get a BROOKWELL to take a DNA test so I do not know whether the BROOKWELLs and BROCKWELLs are connected in some way.