March 2010 – Lowndes family history

This site http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/lowndes-family-crest.htm perports to give you an accurate family history, but for Lowndes at least there are many errors and I do not recommend it.

The Arms are incorrect (and frankly odd). The description suggests that the family came to England with the Norman Conquest, but then states that the name Lowndes has an Old English derivation! Such a basic mistake is worth a giggle, but little else.

I’ve yet to find one of these companies that cares enough to get it right (or as right as we can get). I recommend anyone after a ‘crest’ creates one from the freely available images on my site, or employs a professional Heraldic expert.

The Lowndes Roll is now online for your perusal at

http://www.mikelowndes.net/lowndes-roll/

lowndes roll

Archive number D\LO\5\12 . The Pedigree was comissioned/created by a member of the Selby-Lowndes family in 1862 and bought by the Archive in 1957. The Lowndes archive is catalogued in the National Archives, here

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=008-lowndes&cid=5-8#5-8

You will quickly see that it is far from finished. Though the main lines are present, many details are noted in pencil and some colouring remains incomplete.

The Pedigree and other things in the Ayelsbury archive relate to the Chesham branch of the family who arrived c.16th. It also concerns the Winslow branch of the family, and subsequently Lowndes-Stone of Brightwell Park, Oxfordshire. There’s plenty more in the archive I may return to, including a collection of C18th recipies, and documents recording the building of the Lowndes estate in Knightsbridge, London – by Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855), when this was a ‘green field’ area.

Month: March 2010

‘Family Crest’ FAIL

Lowndes Roll