Kindly transcribed by Chris Booth, who writes “… I thought the article below might be of interest ... It was written by Maxwell Craven in the “Derby Telegraph” as part of his review of our village book “Brailsford and Ednaston - A Thousand Years On”.

Family Name with a Unique Place in History

ONE of the first useless facts that enters my head when I think of Brailsford is that the family of BRAILSFORD is one of the very few in England to unchallengeably have a descent from an Anglo-Saxon tenant holding the same land before the Norman Conquest. They are unique in Derbyshire, for whilst the CALOWs, STANTONs, OKEOVERs, KNIVETONs and ALSOPs have unquestioned descent from non-Normans living in 1066, none kept the same piece of land through the upheavals of 1066-1086. Yet Elfin, or Elsinus, or Alsin (probably Aelfwine) de BRAILSFORD is recorded as tenant of Henry de FERRERS there, and in Bupton and Osmaston, in 1086. We do not know who his son, Nicholas, married, but she brought him Wingerworth, where settled his youngest grandson, John, ancestor, apparently, of all the BRAILSFORDs in the north east of Derbyshire. John's eldest surviving brother, Henry, was the great great grandfather of Sir Henry de BRAILSFORD, with whom the male line of BRAILSFORD died out, his only daughter carrying the estate to Sir John BASSETT of Cheadle in 1356. In between there were Hugh and Thomas, Serlo, and Eutropius who inherited Osmaston and took its name instead of BRAILSFORD, as did his grandson, who settled at Culland and called himself de CULLAND.

There are loads of BRAILSFORDs in the county today and right across the UK and beyond, all descended from this family. What I didn't have time to do was to comb the book to see if there was a family of that name living in Brailsford today - it would seem appropriate after almost a thousand years!

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