Saddleton

Recorded in various spellings including Saddington, Saddinton, Saddintone and Saddleton, this is an English surname. It is locational from either the village of Saddington in Leicestershire or the place of the Saegeat people, and first recorded in the famous Domeday Book of 1086 as 'Sadintone,' or it may be from a now 'lost' medieval village perhaps called 'Sade-tun'. If so this translates as the village on land shaped like a saddle. We have not been able to find any such place in any of the known gazetters, although this is not surprising. Many villages and hamlets were not recorded at all, although often over the centuries spelling has changed to the point where identification is very difficult or impossible. Furthermore locational surnames by their nature are 'from' names. That is to say names given to people after they left their original homes to move somewhere else. Spelling being at best indifferent, and local dialects very thick, often lead to the development of 'sounds like' spellings. In this case the surname is well recorded in the surviving church registers of the diocese of Greater London, with Richard Saddleton being a witness at St Mary Whitechapel, Stepney, on February 20th 1618, and William Saddleton at St Margerets Westminster, on September 13th 1687.