This is the Home Page for the West Sussex HOUNSOME family
The Origin of the HOUNSOME's
Before A.D. 675 there was a 'land' of Chertsey Abbey (Surrey) called Hundeualdesham, which we would now call Hundwald's Haeme (or home). So presumably there was once a man called Hundwald (=dog wood), a Saxon, who made his home there. This place was mentioned in documents of King Aelfred in A.D. 889 and of King Aethelstan in A.D. 933 and in the Domesday Monarchium in 1086, when it came under Bishop Odo the Norman. Some time between then and the early 1200's the new Norman owners, calling themselves de Hunewaldesham, moved to the Selbourne area in Hampshire. In 1252 there was a William de Hunewaldesham in Surrey, but there was also a Robert de Hundesham in Oakhanger, Selbourne in 1233, so there were probably two branches of the family at that time. Or perhaps there were two different families calling themselves 'of Hundwaldsham'.
By 1280 the family had moved on to Bramshott in Hampshire, where they stayed until the beginning of the 1700's when Thomas Hounsom moved to West Harting in Sussex. In the previous four hundred years or so the name had been variously spelled 'de Hundesham', 'Houndesham', 'Hundesham', 'Hounsham', 'Hownesom', Hounsum', and in several other ways. The Hounsom(e)s lived in the Rother Valley from then on, with few outside that restricted area. They lived in Harting, Mardon, Cocking, Bepton, Stedham, Trotton, Woolbeding (all in the Rother Valley between Petersfield and Midhurst) where they were all farm labourers.
The diaspora started in the mid-1800's, with Hounsomes going to Chichester and other south English towns. There was a well-documented emigration to Canada in the 1850-70's, but most Hounsomes stayed in the south east of England until the early 1900's.
My particular branch lived in Bepton until my Grandfather moved to Horsely in Surrey. I was born in Woking, Surrey, but was brought up in Hammersmith, London and lived in the Manchester area for 32 years. I have now moved back south to Devon.
NOTE
All living people, or people who might be living, have been removed from this family tree by the program GED2GO.
(early history courtesy of Rex & Linda Lancefield and the late Robert Hounsome)
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