"DEDICATED IN MEMORY OF OUR LOVED ONES AND ANCESTORS WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE US"
Before you begin please take a few minutes to sign the Guest Book. Also feel free to invite other family members to visit the Monk/Thorpe Family website at TribalPages.com.
To help the Monk/Thorpe Family Tree grow please send information (e.g. vital event
records, short stories, photos, etc.) to: Art Fors.
The Monk Family History
In this family tree the Monk family ancestors originated from Thaxted, Essex, England.
If ever a town deserved the description “picturesque”, it is the Thaxted, one of the prettiest towns, not only in Essex, but in all of England. The combination of historic buildings and a lovely countryside setting makes Thaxted one of the highlights of exploring East Anglia. Thaxted has been described as the “jewel in the crown” of Essex.
Thaxted is a village and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of northwest Essex, England. The town is 15 miles (24 km) north from the county town of Chelmsford, and 5.5 miles (9 km) east from the M11 motorway. The parish contains the hamlets of Cutlers Green, Bardfield End Green, Sibleys Green, Monk Street, and Richmond’s Green. Much of its status as a "town" rests on 4 historic buildings; a tall, rustic, medieval timber-framed guildhall, a place where guilds of skilled tradesmen regulated their trading practices, a restored 18th century windmill, a pair of chocolate box almshouses, and a magnificent medieval church. On top of that, there are historic buildings highlighting every time period from medieval to modern.
The settlement of Thaxted dates back to at least the Saxon era and it was already a thriving community long before the Normans arrived in England, and there was a church here as early as 981AD. In 1205 a market charter was granted, though it seems likely there was already a market long before this. From the 13th century Thaxted became a centre for the cutlery industry, in part because of cheap rents charged by local landowners!
The cutlery trade was at the centre of Thaxted's prosperity until well into the 16th century, and it was money from the trade that helped rebuild the parish (St John the Baptist) church in the 14th and 15th centuries. When the cutlery market declined there was a brief flourishing of weaving in Thaxted and a short-lived Guild of Clothiers was founded in 1583.
It seems that the medieval market place extended up Town Street and took in much of what is now the churchyard, but by the late 14th century the layout of the town achieved its present look, and it has changed very little since then.
About The Monk Surname
This Anglo-Scottish surname derives from pre 7th Century word "munuc", meaning a monk, or one who lived at a monastery. The name was originally occupational, describing a servant employed at such a place, although later it assumed the religious meaning with which it is associated. As a surname it was almost always a nickname for somebody who looked like a monk, or for one who led a solitary life given to good works, or to an actor, one who played the part of a monk in the pageants or the travelling theatres of the Middle Ages. That it was a nickname is evidence by the fact that monks were supposed to be celibate, and precluded by ecclesiastical law from marriage. In the 20th century the name can be spelt as Monk, the patronymic Monks, Monck, Monnick, Munck, or Munk.
The Thorpe Family History
About The Thorpe Surname
This is an ancient name of Anglo-Saxon and Old Scandinavian origin, and is a locational surname from any of the places in England named with Old Norse or Old Danish element "thorp", or the rarer Olde English pre 7th Century "throp". Generally, "thorp(e)" in a placename indicates that it was an area of Danish settlement. The word means a small hamlet or village that grew by colonisation from a larger settlement, and was originally an outlying farm dependent on a nearby village. In the modern idiom there are a number of variant forms of the surname, ranging from Thorpe, Thorp, Tharp and Turp, to Thro(u)p, Thrupp and Thripp.
