This unusual and interesting name is of Anglo-Saxon origin and is a locational surname deriving from a place that no longer exists, a "lost" village. An estimated seven to ten thousand villages and hamlets are known to have disappeared in Britain and Ireland since records began, most of the villages, lost during the 14th Century when great tracts of land were forcibly "cleared" for sheep pasture. "Stradling" is thought to have been situated on the borders of modern-day Essex and London. The placename means "dwellers on or by the (Roman) road", derived from the Old English pre 7th Century "straet", road, with the suffix meaning "people", "dwellers at ". Elizabeth Stradling and Edmund Carlyon were married in London in 1572, and one Richard Stradling was christened in Romford, Essex, on the May 23rd 1676. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Kathrine Stradling, married Thomas Palmer, which was dated 13th January 1548, St. Lawrence Pountney, London, during the reign of King Edward VI, "The Boy King", 1548 - 1533. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.