Guild of One-Name Studies
One-name studies, Genealogy
Study: Hawkesford   
Variants: Hawkford, Hawksford
Category: 3 - A study where research using core genealogical datasets and transcriptions is well under way on a global basis.
Contact: Mr Peter Hudson
My name is Peter Hudson, I began researching my family history about thirty years ago and became fascinated by my mother’s maiden name of Fawkes, and my paternal grandmother’s maiden name of Hawkesford; eventually I focused on the much rarer of the two, Hawkesford. About 10 years ago I began to research the Hawkesford name as a one-name, and eventually registered the surname with the Guild in 2012. I was already aware that Hawksford was a variant of Hawkesford, since my grandmother and her seven siblings were all recorded variously as Hawkesford and Hawksford throughout their lives. When I registered the name, I included Hawkford as a second, very rare variant.
This Hawkesford one-name study with its variants, is complicated by another, otherwise unrelated surname, where the consistently, and current recorded misspelling of Hawkesford/Hawksford is Oxford, resulting in this becoming a current variant. To highlight this, the Oxford name has also been registered with the Guild as a separate study. As far as I am currently aware, Hawkesford/Hawksford is not a variant of Oxford.
Currently variants of Hawkesford include: Hawksford, Oxford, and Hawkford.
There are several deviant spellings of Hawkesford, which are unorthodox spellings resulting from clerical error or mis-transcriptions with just a few sporadic occurrences. Those so far discovered are:
Haksford, Halkesford, Hanksford, Hansford, Harxford, Haucksford, Hauxford, Hawxford, Haxford and Hexford.
Hawkesford is an English locative name mainly occurring in the Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Leicestershire border area, generally along and south of Watling Street (A5 road).
Overwhelmingly, the early concentration of the Hawkesford and Hawksford names are in Warwickshire and Staffordshire, between Wolverhampton and Nuneaton, west to east, and Lichfield and Coventry, north to south.