ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

WILLIAM SHARESHULL, chief justice of king's bench, 1350-61, was born c. 1289/90 and died early in 1370.

The family name undoubtedly came from the Staffordshire village in Cuttlestone hundred, just north of Wolverhampton, now known as Shareshill. But the name was not confined to Staffordshire; it accompanied the future chief justice to Oxfordshire and transformed his new home, Barton Odonis, a liberty of about 1000 acres, into Barton Shareshull or Shareshull Barton. The hundred and seven variations in spelling are bewildering: some are clearly due to errors of scribes or printers, for example, the substitution of ‘ n ’ for ‘u’ in ‘Sarneshull’ or strange versions like ‘Saleshul’ or ‘Sharghul’, or ‘Schardeshull’ or to phonetic spellings like ‘Charshull’. There is, however, a certain chronological sequence, which is not always strictly adhered to. The eleventh-century ‘Sarechel’ is succeeded by a number of forms beginning with ‘Sar’, changed later into ‘Schar’, and ending with ‘hill’, ‘hulf’ or ‘hull’. The V vanishes from the Staffordshire placename before it does from the personal name, but by the second decade of the fourteenth century ‘Shareshulle’ is rivalling ‘Schareshulle’ as a surname. As Pike noted, the former is found in Latin records, the latter in French reports. The only personal signature of the chief justice that has come to my attention is at the end of a French letter of 1354 enrolled in an abbot's register: ‘Par William de Shareshulle.’ That the final ‘ e ’ should soon completely vanish is almost inevitable. By about 1400 ‘ Shareshull’ is usual for the family name and ‘ Shareshill ’ for the Staffordshire village. The name of the Oxfordshire village, with the disappearance of the Shareshull male line and therefore with a growing ignorance of the Staffordshire background, undergoes strange vicissitudes, such as ‘Barton Chershill’ or ‘Barton Sherswell’, finally becoming ‘ Sesswell Barton’, and surviving on maps of a little over a century ago as ‘Seswell Farm’.

The connexion of the village of Shareshill with Oxfordshire had not originated with the Shareshulls.