Roddom
Variations
Origins
Admiral Robert Roddam
Roddam Hall
Coal Mining

History of Surnames
    Roddam
    Coxon

Individuals
     Hillary Rodham Clinton

Variations

The surnames of RODDOM, and RODHAM have evolved from the original surname of RODDAM, and have remained virtually unaltered for centuries; in addition, they are names that are very unique to Northeast England.  As surnames travelled, many become distorted and changed by local dialects and illiteracy, eventually bearing little resemblance to the original.  But the Roddams remained remarkably true to the original, as "the man of faire lands in Northumbrelande", a description given in the reign of Henry VIII.  Centuries later Burke lists the Roddams of Northumberland as being amongst the most ancient names in Britain.

Origins

In the 10^th century, King Athelston of England Granted a Pole Roddam a tract of land centred around Roddam Tower.  Northumberland has been a wild and lawless land and the king wanted good and trusted men to subdue the troublesome Northerners.

Roddam Hall lies a few miles south of the market town of Wooler, located in the shelter of the Cheviot Hills; Mackenzie (The Story of Northumberland, 1825) described the house as a handsome modern building, and commands a very pleasant prospect of the vale that stretches under it.

The Chevoit Hills, backing the hamlet of Roddam, are a natural watershed for the fertile eastern plain and river valleys.  This is great cattle country, and the local gentry and farmers were always more interested in pasture than politics.   The seat of the Roddams held common boundary with the lands of the Liburns, later to be the home of the Collingwood family in 1793.  To the east, Chillingham, with its much altered fourteenth century castle, was the home of the Greys.  This ancient family became, eventually, by marriage, the Bennets, which is the family name of the Earls of Tankerville.

Admiral Robert Roddam

Perhaps the most distinguished member of this house of Roddam was Robert Roddam (1720-1808), who had a most illustrious naval career.  His career culminated in 1795, with his appointment to Admiral of the Red, the highest office on the list.  He returned as often as possible to the family home and lands.

Admiral Roddam was the last direct descendent, although he was married three times he had no children.  His first wife, Lucy Mary, was the daughter of Sir Henry George Clinton, they married on 24^th April 1749, sadly, in less than two years, on 9^th December 1750, she died.  His second wife, Althea, was the daughter of Sir James Calder.  They married on 16^th March 1775, she died on 21^st July 1792.  His third and final wife, Anne, was the daughter of Elizabeth Harrison, father not named.  Anne and Robert were married on 24^th September 1795.  Anne died in July 1807.  Eight months later on 31^st March 1808, the Admiral himself died.  He was buried in the family mausoleum, a large stone monument in the churchyard at Ilderton, the last of a line from one of the few pre-Conquest families in Northumberland.  The estates were bequeathed to a kinsman, who then assumed the surname and arms of Roddam; his name was William Spencer Stanhope, and he was a great grandson of Edward Collingwood of Byker and Dissington, by his marriage with Mary, daughter of John Roddam, the admiral's uncle.

Lack of issue, or simply an issue of daughters by succeeding families, took the lineage further from the original illustrious line.  John Falder, a cousin of William Spencer Stanhope, assumed the surname and arms of Roddam in November 1864.  At the beginning of the twentieth century another female of the line came to convey the name to its greatest change.  Helen Mary Goldie, of the Roddam ilk, married on 9^th July 1908 a Major Graham Carr Holdeness, who assumed the additional name of Roddam by Deed Poll in August 1934; henceforth, the line became, both in arms and in name, Holdeness-Roddam.

Roddam Hall

Baron Vinson (life Peer VK 1985) of Roddam Dene in the county of Northumberland now owns the Hall and estate.  Lord Vinson, a man of business and involved in the world of finance, has no Roddam family connections; he simply took the place name into his title.  Roddam Hall had suffered much degradation and neglect since the death of the Admiral, so Lord Vinson overhauled and updated the building, the estate overall is now in good order and indeed flourishing.

There are many Roddam/Rodham families mentioned in parish registers in north Durham.  Connecting these families to a common ancestry proves almost impossible.  Moreover, the Durham Roddams are, in the main, poor mining families, making the possibility of any connection to nobility appear to be remote but, nevertheless, not impossible.  It is, of course, readily appreciated that workers could often take their name from a dwelling place, a workplace or from the Lord of the Manor. 

Many of the younger Roddam sons would have had to make their own way in life.  These relations, deprived of inherited wealth, or apportionment sufficient to maintain an easy livelihood soon found life a struggle.  Making a living in the remote areas of Northumberland was, for those not employed on large estates or the large farms, fraught with difficulty.  During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the small upland landowners, unlike landowners near the Tyne Valley, had no nearby booming market, their isolation imposed restrictions on their business.  An expanding population imposed further problems to an impoverished land.  The great mass of poor people in the countryside grew at an alarming rate - indeed now poverty became a hereditary condition.  Many upland farmers supplemented their meagre farming income with small-scale mining, either for lead of coal.  Again, means of transport from remote areas restricted the size of the business.  The sudden fall in lead prices in 1880-82 caused terrible recession - lead prices never recovered - and there was a subsequent decline in population in the west highlands of Northumberland and Durham.  Furthermore, the great agricultural depression of the late 1870s began a persistent strained relationship between tenants and landlords.

Coal Mining

The important period to consider is from 1760 to 1850; this was for the Northeast a time of rapid change in its economic, political and social organization.  The Plague, so long endemic in Britain, finally ceased and several other life destroying diseases no longer ravaged the population.  In addition, this decade saw the true beginnings of the Industrial revolution.  Throughout the reign of George III, men and women were flooding into the industrial eastern edge of northern England to provide labour for its coalmines.  The miserable low agricultural wages of the time forced a rural population to demand coal; indeed the steam engine essentially established the value of coal.  It naturally followed that the iron trade became extremely important and, as most of the ore in those early days was found in the proximity of coal, the many associated industries moved to the coal fields too.

In this comparatively small area of the country not only was the overall population increasing, but the working population was growing faster than all others.  Even the growing children, who formerly did light domestic work, were now found useful roles in the new industries.  The squalor of these early days with such great concentrations of people packed into small areas, increased with time.  People were brought in, regardless, to swell the mineworker population, without first providing or improving living conditions.  Herding families into this environment, plus the hard, hazardous work did, however, develop a social instinct that was to result in the welding together of a homogenous people. 'Community' was the necessary force that produced the cultural characteristics, the distinctive dialect, and the extrovert, cheerful disposition that are the features of areas such as Tyne and Wear today.

Did then the remnants - the unfortunates - of the Roddam name fall into this coaly melting pot, thence to become a constituent of this pitmatic community?  It seems unlikely that we will ever know.  The written records have now been most thoroughly studied by many interested people, and no connection has become known.  A present day Ken Roddam of Middlesborough is carrying out a One-Name Study of Roddams, and some interesting facts may one day emerge.  Much material however is to be found assembled in the archives of the Beamish Open air Museum.  Archivist Andy Guy has conducted much research on the Roddams, and many family historians with an interest in the name have contributed to the museum's records.  There are a number of artefacts and a much-treasured milk-jug - an object of much research and speculation - that have produced more questions than answers. 

One branch of this family name emanated from Tanfield around 1740.  They were a particularly close family group and they settled in the Beamish Valley.  The men, it seems all took up mining, fathers and sons seeking maximum earnings for unskilled labour, which was, of course hewing.  The 'hewer' was the labouring aristocrat of the mines; he was the primary procurer of the coal and was paid for what he produced.  He had no security of a regular wage; hence, to make a living he had to work very hard indeed.  He was the worker at the 'coal-face' who, by means of a pick and shovel (in the early days), felled the whole area of coal, making it available to be loaded into the trams or tubs for transportation to the surface.  Not only was it a job of skill, strength and stamina, but also a job of great risk as they strove and took chances to gain maximum earnings.  Drift mines - there is a good example open to the public at Beamish Museum - allowed the man to walk in, all be it stooped, to cut the coal.  In many of the mines in Durham, however eighteen inches was not an unusual height for a seam, although two feet was about average, most were thin seams that made it quite impossible for the hewer to stand up.  Coal mining has always been unhealthy, hard, dirty, dangerous job and, in the past, the people in the industry not only worked but also lived in grim conditions.

The apprehension of the dangers they faced at the coal workings were apparent to all who lived within the vicinity of the mines.  But it is a strange paradox that danger, poverty and adversity, in the main, bring out the best features of human relationships.  So it was that this close knit family of Rodhams were wrapped in an intimate and caring community.  Their story is the stuff of Durham mining history, moving from pit to pit because of the labour hiring system.  They changed houses because they lived in mine owned property.

The South Derwent Band was composed almost exclusively of members of the Rodham family - indeed they had a local reputation of being proficient brass players.  In those days of limited forms of amusement workers were compelled to explore their own resources, 'brass banding' being one such pursuit that was passionately embraced by the mining communities.

[Home][Surnames][Individuals]