Outerbridge

Recorded in several forms including Outerbridge, Outibridge, Outbridge and possibly others, this is an English medieval surname. It originates from some place originally known as 'The outer bridge' or similar, and presumably was a hamlet at a bridge outside of the walls of a city or town. The famous Victorian etymologist Canon Charles Bardsley writing in 1880, was unable to identify the place. Over a century later the siutuation remains the same. We have not been able to identify the site and have concluded that the place is or was what today we call a 'lost' medieval village. Todate some five thousand such places have been identified in the British Isles through painstaking research, and many such as this one, still remain to be discovered. The conclusive proof of the former existence of a 'lost' place is often the surname itself, indeed it is sometimes only the surname which can sometimes lead to the identifiction of a site. As to why so many places have 'disappeared' over the past five centuries has been the subject of several books. In general it was because of changes in agricultural practices, rapacious landlords, and the effects of plague. In this case examples of surname recordings from the registers of the city of London include Nicholas Outbridge who married Elizabeth Pecowe at the church of St Thomas the Apostle in 1571, and Helen Outerbridge, given as being a servant of Mr Sanbroke, who died from 'the plague', and was buried at St Michaels Cornhill, in 1625.