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I am trying to pluck up the courage to begin the task of uploading a vast amount of manuscript family records. These mainly concern the families into which the Sapwells married whilst in Wolverhampton, London and Norfolk. I also have other documents (letters, diaries and biographies). I would very much like to trace the Sapwell line back beyond the demise of parish records, to see where it came from. Many years ago (pre-internet) I saw an entry in an old book on the origin of surnames suggesting that it is an old English name meaning "the dweller by the pool ("well") in the spruce-wood ("saepe")". I think that this may be fanciful as there is nothing to corroborate it. My own pet theory (perhaps no less fanciful!) is that the name is a corruption of "Sopwell" (it appears in 18th century written records spelt this way) and might derive from the former Priory of Sopwell near St Albans in Hertfordshire, which is not all that far from the earliest recorded concentration of the name in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire.
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