Stitch

Recorded in several forms including Stitch, the diminutive Stitchell, the agent suffix Stitcher, and the rare Styche and Stych, this is an English surname. It is topogrphical or residential and described a person who owned or at least lived at a 'stycce'. This was a piece of land suitable for ploughing, and described as such in the early charters of the counties of Essex and Cambridge. Originally the 'word' may also have had some size significance, such as the amount of land that could be ploughed in a particular period, perhaps a day or two days. Topographical names such as this one were amongst the earliest to be created, since to name a person by a natural or mandmade feature provided the earliest form of identification in the small communities of those times. Indeed this name may well have been originally a 'personal' name, although this is uncertain. What is known is that the first recording is almost certainly that of Wluuin Stettel of Suffolk in the year 1095 during the reign of King William 11nd (1087 - 1100). He wqas known as Rufus, and is particulary famous for shooting himself with his own arrow! Philip Stitcher appears in the rolls known as the Fees for the county of Sussex in the year 1235, whilst William Steche appears in the similar Subsidy Rolls also of Sussex in 1296.