Whatmore Family History

In the parish of Burford in south Shropshire is the township of WHATMORE. For many years I believed that this was the place where the Whatmore family had originated, taking its name from the place, or the place taking the name from the family. Here are to be found Whatmore Mill, Whatmore Farm and Whatmore Court.  Even after looking through the Burford parish registers and failing to find more than a handful of Watmores or Whatmores listed there, I still thought that this township was our place of origin. Then in 1996, Geoffrey Whatmore published ‘Whatmore Panorama’ and I was astonished to discover that the Watmore / Whatmore family had settled at Stottesdon in Shropshire and had very little connection with the township of Whatmore. It was certainly not their place of origin.

Even Geoffrey Whatmore was initially misled by the statement in the Victoria County History for Worcestershire:

‘The family of Whatmore held land at Whatmore in Burford and apparently also at Sutton under the Sturmys’

 Whatmore Farm in 1961

Copyright: Rhys Whatmore

The contributor to the Victoria County History was referring to the period around 1200. An earlier writer - Eyton, whose ‘Antiquities of Shropshire’ were published in the nineteenth century  - would seem to support the Victoria County History. He refers to Richard de Wetmore and his son Robert in 1256 and to Margery, widow of Peter de Wetmore who sued her step-son Simon  in 1199 for dower in Wetmore, Shropshire and in Sutton, Worcestershire. Clearly there were Wetmores, named after the township of Wetmore. These dates are however too early for Wetmore to be a hereditary surname. It merely refers to the place of origin of an individual and there is no evidence of kinship between these individuals. 

 Whatmore Court in 1961

Copyright: Rhys Whatmore

It was perhaps understandable that this mistake should have been made in  the Victoria  County  History since in the 1841 census there was a Whatmore family living in the township and  during the nineteenth century 93 acres at Ryley Farm in the township did indeed below to  a branch of the Whatmore family. These had, however, come to the family through marriage and had belonged to Ann Chipp of Ludlow who married Edward Whatmore of Ludlow in 1820.  These were not ancestral Whatmore lands and Edward and Ann never lived there. In fact sometime after 1824, Edward and Ann moved from Ludlow to Edgware in Middlesex where they ran the New Inn. It was only in the late nineteenth century that the township acquired its current spelling. Prior to that it was Whetmore, Wheatmore and other variants.

Whatmore Mill in 1961

Copyright: Rhys Whatmore