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This is an email that I received from a fellow Woolner, it explains a fair bit about the development of the name. My grandfather was born and registered as a Woolough, he lived as a Woolner, and was buried in the name of Woolnough.I do not know the name of my grandfather's brother, but suspect it was Thomas, who was known as Woolnough. My own family migrated from Lancashire towards the end of the last century, having lived in the Bury, Heywood area of that county. After initial searches at the then Somerset House, a visit to the parish church at Mary at Bury, enabled me to trace my family, father to son, back to an entry of year 1622, under christenings. 'John, son of Thomas Woolner.' The register went back another thirty years, but there were no other entries, and all the entries for the first two hundred years refer to a single family. To go back further we extended the search over a much larger area, but no other entry of the surname, or variations could be found, neither could the surname be found in the 'Will' indices. Somerset House searches had revealed that by far the larger amount of entries referred to Suffolk, some in Norfolk, roughly east of a line drawn between Ipswich and Norwich. The spelling Woolnough outnumbered Woolner by about four or five to one. Both these spellings occured together in some towns and villages. A parish register for Ipswich shows the following – Marriage 1663 Wm. Wolner and An Burral, but under application for marriage licence Wm. Wolnaugh and An Burral, also for Lowestoft, James Woolenough, alias Woollner and Elizabeth Steel[1780]. So the spelling of the name was at times, arbitrary. The further we went back, even in Suffolk, the spelling 'Woolner' became rare, until in the early part of the C17th , only a few isolated entries occurred, but no actual family could be found. The spellings had become Wolnough, Wohough, Wolnowe, Wolno, Wolnall etc. It appeared as though my cousin and I had come to the end of our search, with the 1622 entry at Bury, Lancs. We decided to concentrate our search by adding more information to that already known. We had noted a property known as 'Woolners' in the township of Heap, in the parish of Bury, and after a long search found the two [senervals of Leine] - look this up, I think it is a Norman French term to do with leasing land - dated 1755 and 1802 for the old stone farmhouse. It took me a long time to discern that the dark stamp sized smudge at the bottom of the lence [?] was a seal. I applied to the Lancs. record office for an enlarged photo of the seal, which showed the head and shoulders of a man, with some inscriptions, broken and not easily legible, but enough to note Bungay 1573 and Bury 1621. The probate courts for most of Suffolk are covered by the Consistory Court of Norwich, the Archdeaconary of Suffolk, and in the west by the Archdeaconary of Sudbury. The Indices of the Consistory Court of Norwich contained a 'Will' entry for the year 1590. Thomas Wolnall, Tanner of Bungay. Also under application for marriage licences, Thomas Wolnowe and Susan Codde for year 1573. The marriage was at Earsham in Norfolk, near to Bungay, Suffolk. My own family in Lancashire had been connected to the leather, shoe-making business for many years, and the Suffolk spelling of Wolnall I thought was too far out to be connected to my own. I applied for a copy of the 1590 'Will' and of course needed this Thomas Wolnall to have had a son Thomas to be the Thomas to have migrated to Bury, Lancs with the seal of his father, which impression was found on the renewal of lease for 1755!! The will of Thomas Wolnall 1590 only recorded 'all my children', but the parish register of St. Mary, Bungay, recorded the christening of a son, Thomas in 158

please could anyone help me with the name woolner. my grandmother was called woolner yet her older brother had a different variation of the name possibly woolenough (not sure of the spelling) could anyone enlighten me on where the woolner name originated from and the different variations of the name woolner thank you gill