Croxton Kerrial is a strange name, often misspelt and mispronounced by those who are not familiar with the village. What are its origins?

          The easiest part is the ‘ton’, this is Anglo Saxon, meaning an enclosure, a farmstead or a village and is by far the commonest ‘habitative’ (a name indicating human settlement) name in Leicestershire. The group of ‘tuns’, including Knipton, Denton and Muston along the valley of the river Devon seem to be on the more desirable soils, which would have been settled by the Anglo Saxons early and were likely to have been resettled as part of the early Viking invasions. The first part of the name is most likely to relate to the Danish invasion, deriving from the Scandinavian personal name ‘Krokr’, rendered in English as ‘Croc’, meaning ‘crook backed’,’ hooked’ or possibly even ‘crooked dealer’, thus we have ‘Krokr’s tun’, Krokr’s settlement, Krokr being the lead man of the settlement. The fact that the name retains the Anglo Saxon word ‘tun’ for a settlement makes it seems likely that there was an already well established settlement here before the Danish invasions of the late 9th century and that ‘Krokr’ was one of the warriors of that army who settled in the predominantly Anglo Saxon village and changed part of its name.

          Examination of historical documents shows us the Croxton name has been written in many different ways in the past. Not surprisingly, in a world where few could write and there was no standardised spelling until the advent of printing, those who could write, such as clerks, would have written words as they were pronounced, by those dictating them. Thus we have the following surprisingly long list of spellings, starting with that in the Domesday book in 1086.

1086    CROHTONE  

1130    CROCSTONA

1177    CROKESTONE         

1186    CROKESTONE         

1195    CROCHESTON         

1198    CROXTONA  

1198    CROSTON     

1198    CROXTON     

1198    CROSTON     

1198    CROXTONE  

1200    CROXTON     

1221    CREXSTONT 

1203    CROCSTUN  

1223    CROCSTONE

1224    CROSTON     

1225    CROCSTONE

1225    CROCSTONE

1233    CROCSTONE

1235    NORTH CROCSTON BY BELVERU            

1236    CROCSTONE

1239    CROXTON     

1254    CROSTON     

1270    CROSTON     

1328    CROCSTONE

1366    CROSTON     

1454    CREXSTONT 

1500    CREXSTONT

1510    CREXSTONT

From then onwards CROXTON        

          The present spelling of the word appears first in the 12th century and again in the 13th century before becoming standardised from the 16th century onwards. Equally interesting is the fact that the local pronunciation of the name, pronouncing the ‘x’ as an ‘s,’ dates back to a spelling of the 12th century.

So far we have an Anglo Saxon element and a Danish element, the third element is Norman. The first suffix to the Croxton name is in 1201, when it is recorded as ‘Saracene’, this name is a mystery, as, whilst an Oliver Sarazin held land in neighbouring Warwickshire in 1252, there is no record of the Sarazin family holding land in Croxton.

          In 1239 Bertram de Criol was granted the manor by Henry III and the first use of the name as a suffix to Croxton in written records was in 1247, as Kiriel and similarly in both 1290 and 1335. Although the Criols sold the manor in 1335, we still have references to Croxton Kiriel in 1444 and 1516, Kyryall in 1499 and Kyriell in 1572. The suffix is rendered as Kerrial first in 1500, again in 1535, 1539 and frequently to 1629 and onwards. After the dissolution of Croxton Abbey in 1538 the de Roos family owned the manor and the village name is rendered with the suffix’ Roose’ in 1590 and 1609 and ‘Rosse’ in 1611. This usage clearly did not catch on and so despite them having only held the village for one hundred of its thousand year history, the Kerrial name still lives on to this day.