Recorded in the spellings of Togwell, Tuckwell and Tugwell, this surname is English. It is almost certainly locational, from a now 'lost' medieval village called 'Tuk-waella' or similar, or the 'Tuckers spring'. 'Tucker" was the usual term for the occupation of cloth softener in the south-west of England, whilst "walker" was the term used in the west and north of the country and "fuller" in the south-east and east Anglia. The derivation of the name is from the Old English pre 7th Century verb "tucian", meaning "to torment", referring to the softening of the cloth by beating and tramping on it in water,and in Middle English, "tucken". 'Lost' villages are a fairly common phenomena in British surnames. It is estimated that about five thousand surname originate from lost places, of which the only public reminder in the 20th century is the existing surname, often ina wide variety of spellings. In this case an early example of the surname recordings was that of the marriage of John Tugwell and Hannah Marshall, St. Botolph's church, Bishopgate, London, on Christmas Eve, 1738. The first recorded spelling of the family name is believed to be that of Baldwin Tuckere, which was dated 1236, in the records of Battle Abbey, Sussex. This was during the reign of King Henry 111 of England, 1216 - 1272. 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.

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