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The Meaning and origin of the name of Hargreaves,Hargreave Hargroves, Hargraves, Hargrave, Haregrave, Hardgrave, Hardgraf Hardegrave, Haregraue, Haregraua, Hargrave.
The Angle and Saxon settlers gave names to their settlements, which were often named after some special feature of the locality such as a hill or river, or other well-known landmark.
Important people adopted the name of the settlement or town where they lived as their surname. The Hargreaves surname was taken from a settlement in the Saxon countryside. (Hares once lived in the Harewoods or Hargreaves). A Greave was a woodland avenue, or clearing, graved or cut out of a forest. Grave was a carving or cutting. The word Hargreaves means "hailing from the grove where the hares are plentiful".
There is a village of Hargrave in Northamptonshire, England, also there were three villagers in England called Hargreaves. John de Hargrave is mentioned in the "Hundred Rolls" (English). While John de Hargreve is mentioned in the "Calendarium Rotulorum Patentium in Turri Londinensi".
This means that any person living in the village of Hargreaves would be entitled to use Hargreaves as their surname, even if they were not related., simply because they came from a village of that name. Hargreaves, Hargreave, Hargroves, Hargrove, Hargraves, Hargrave.
Most of the common place-names which have come to be used as surnames originally were descriptions of the nature of the places where the Anglo-Saxon settlers established themselves. Most were not inherited surnames but were derived from places, which lay in a parish and were no more than descriptive addresses of outlying dwelling places.
C W Matthews in his "English Surnames", Chapter 26 on English Villages says, "or yet again there are three villages called Hargreaves; Professor Ekwell cannot distinguish whether the graves or woods in question were hoary or full of hares, they could be either, and likewise there could be other hoar woods with hares in them too, where someone lived.
Charles Waring Bardsley in "English Surnames - Their Sources & Significations" (Local Surnames p. 120), says " Our 'Groves' and 'Greaves' and 'Graves', descendants of the 'de la Groves' and 'Atte Groves' of early rolls, not to mention the more personal 'Grover' and 'Graver' convey the same idea. A 'Greave' was a woodland avenue, graved or cut out of the forrest. Fairfax speaks of the:- "The wind in holts and shady 'greaves'". Also:-"Tis true we only 'grave' in stone now, but it was not always so". We still call the last resting-place of the dead in our churchyards a 'grave', though dug from the soil.
HARGRAVE is a small village just within the boundary of Northamptonshire. Just outside the village the counties of Northamtonshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire meet.
During the Roman occupation of Britain from 55 BC to 450 AD there was a Roman settlement here; the name Hargrave means "The Army Camp" (Note 1). In 1893 a man ploughing in Middle Lound struck rock and found it to be a large stone coffin of the Roman period. In it was the skeleton of a man facing east.
"Haregrave" is mentioned in the Doomsday book, 1086 and is found in many old documents under various spellings:
Haregrave,Hardgrave, Hardgraf,Hardegrave,Haregraue,Haregraua as well as its current form Hargrave.
From "Magna Britannia" (Henry III 1216-1272) Hargrave was dependent on the "Manor of Rawns" and belonged to Edmund Crouchback, Duke of Lancaster a younger son of the King.
Note 1:
Above the first paragraph are two capitalized hand written words HAR (meaning army) and GRAVE (meaning entrenchment) so the word har-grave means army-entrenchment, referring to the Roman's use of the area between 55BC and 450AD.
In 1086, the Village of Hargrave near in Cheshire, England was within the lands of Robert Cook. Prior to 1066, the Village of Hargrave was held by Osgot. In 1349, a William de Hargrave is recorded in Cheshire, UK.
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