Saniger is a place

Every page here has said the same thing in the same order — a family called Saniger, found at Berkeley, then at Dursley and Cam. The order is wrong. The National Archives' catalogue describes men who are "of Saniger, Berkeley", and farms and lands lying "in Saniger and Hamfallow". Saniger is a place, and the surname is taken from it.

Two centuries of Sanigers at Saniger

Almost all of these are D2957/41 at Gloucestershire Archives — the Berkeley estate deeds. They are catalogue descriptions, not documents this archive has read. catalogued, not yet seen

The place is two hundred years older than the name

The Berkeley family kept its own archive, and it is catalogued. Nine of its deeds name people of Saniger between about 1272 and 1473 — and not one of them is called Saniger.

"Saniger, long held by an old Family of the same Name"

Ralph Bigland was Garter King of Arms and spent decades copying every monumental inscription in Gloucestershire. His account of Berkeley parish says the thing this archive worked out from deeds, in one line — and then gives the stones.

And they were freeholders. At the summons of freeholders, From Hinton: EDWARD SANIGER. At the Election in 1776, one hundred and eleven votes were found in this Parish and its Hamlets.

Bigland's Berkeley monuments, read entire

This page already quoted two of Bigland's Saniger inscriptions. Reading the whole of volume 1 on 15 September gives twenty mentions of the name, and the monuments in Berkeley church turn out to record a single household across four generations, with ages.

Bigland also lists their neighbours at Saniger, which tells you what kind of place it was — a hamlet of a dozen households, not an estate village:

Before it was Saniger it was Swanhanger

Saniger is a worn-down form of SWANHANGER, and the older spelling is on record for five hundred years.

Three forenames carry the older spelling: Thomas de Swonhungre (24 entries), John (10) and William (8) — a family that had already taken its name from the place by about 1300, five centuries before anyone in this archive was born.

Swan-hanger is ordinary Old English: hangra, a wooded slope. The place is a wooded slope above the Severn where swans were. Everything else — the hamlet, the surname, the woman who carried it to Queensland — comes off that.

A clothier in 1692, a gentleman in 1709

The Berkeley estate deeds, D2957/41 at Gloucestershire Archives, follow one household up the social scale in twenty-four years.

Who else was "of Saniger"

Bigland describes the tithing in 1791: “4. Hinton, wherein are Wanswell, a reputed Manor … SANIGER, long held by an old Family of the same Name, in which also is another Estate belonging to WOODWARD: Hinton, Halmore; and Breadstone.” The Woodward estate is not a guess — Daniel Woodward of Bristol, wine merchant, leased Panthurst in Saniger in 1749, and the deed is D2957/41/58.

Bigland's Berkeley monuments name six more households as 'of Saniger'. None of them is called Saniger. A hamlet, not a family seat.

Bigland found a second family under the -gear spelling twenty miles away, at Minchinhampton: Mary, daughter of William Sanigear, d. 24 Feb 1759; William their son, d. 14 July 1760; and Sarah, wife of [William] Sanigear and daughter of Thomas and Ann Lawton, d. 14 June 1770, aged 34.

Four records that name Sanigers outside a parish register

Probate is the record type that names children. This archive had never searched it for this surname. Four things came back, and one of them is not a will at all.

A yeoman in 1601, and a gentleman clothier in 1692

The archive's deepest published person is a William Sanigar said to be born in 1654. These entries reach fifty years behind him and describe a family already established: John Saniger of Berkeley, yeoman, in a release of 2 November 1601.

And they name a man the registers have already produced. The Berkeley page found three William Saingers baptised in ten years, every one the son of an Edward — and noted that one entry styled the father "Mr Edward", which in 1665 marks a gentleman rather than a labourer. The catalogue has him:

The steward of Berkeley says it himself, in 1639

This archive argued from deeds that Saniger is a worn-down Swanhanger. It did not need to argue. John Smyth of Nibley, steward of the Berkeley estates, wrote the survey of the hundred in about 1639, and gave the hamlet its own heading.

The hamlet is no longer just a place name with deeds attached. It has thirteen houses, a resident family in five named generations, a freeholder in 1541 dealing with a baron's manor, and a trustee holding land for other men.

Thirteen houses

Smyth describes the place exactly: “a small hamblet parcell of that Manor of Hame, lyinge within the ffalloe therof, confiftinge of 13. dwellinge houfes; The moft eminent wherof is the inheritance of John Swonhunger ats Sanyger.”

The hamlet straddled two manors, which is why the 1608 survey files it under Hinton: Smyth lists the manor of Hinton as holding “part of Swonhunger, ats Saniger”, along with Oldminster, Kingshill and Ridlesford.

Five generations, named

Smyth then does the thing this archive has wanted from every source it has opened. He names the owner and walks back up the male line:

Four generations above a man living in 1639, in a named place, with the tenure and the rents. Smyth gives no dates for the four, but he dates the purchase of the land to 1518–1523, which puts William in the reign of Henry VIII.

And the older line, which ended in a daughter

The Swonhungers of 1639 were, in Smyth's words, “a yonger branch difcended from the ancient old owners”. The senior line is traceable much further and ended much earlier: Elias Swonhunger, then Elias his son who died in 13 Richard II, then John Swonhungre, who “died without iffue in 3. H. 4.” — 1401 or 1402 — leaving his sisters Isable and Elizabeth his heirs. Isable married John Thorpe, and the main estate went into the name of Thorpe for two hundred years.

Earlier still the name is a witness name in the Berkeley deeds: Thomas de Swonhungre attests charters of Thomas Lord Berkeley under the third Edward, and William Swonhungre appears in 1353 as “cofyn et vn des heires” of Thomas de Stone. documented

Two more men of the name, with dates

Read 14 September 2026 in the full text of the 1885 edition on the Internet Archive (berkeleymanuscri03smyt), which is out of copyright and downloads freely. Smyth's index carries about twenty-five further page references under “Swanhunger” that have not yet been read.

Four hundred and fifty years of it, in one antiquary's hands

Reading the rest of Smyth — the twenty-five page references under Swanhunger in his own index, and the two volumes of the Lives — turns the hamlet's owners into a pedigree. He builds it from the Berkeley deeds and cites the inquisitions he used.

The place, before anybody was named from it

The main line, and how it ended

And the two sisters it ended in

His heirs were his sisters. ELIZABETH married James Gaynor of Kingsholme and “alfo dyed without iffue”. ISABEL married JOHN THORPE OF BRISTOL, and the estate went into the name of Thorpe for two hundred years — until George Thorpe, “his improvident father”, sold much of it and died in Virginia in 1622.

Smyth names his own evidence

That list looked like an errand for Kew. It is not. Tested on 15 September 2026 against the printed Calendars of Inquisitions Post Mortem for Edward II and Edward III, neither the Swonhungers nor the Stones appear — and the reason is the record type. A royal inquisition post mortem was taken only on the death of a TENANT-IN-CHIEF of the Crown. These people held of the lord of Berkeley by knight service and suit of court; the Berkeleys held in chief, and their tenants did not. So the inquisition Smyth cites after the death of John Swonhunger is almost certainly not a Chancery document at all, but one taken in the Berkeley hundred court, or a paper in the castle muniments he had on his desk as steward. The citation is real. The repository was my assumption. controlled null, with a structural reason On the queue →

And the join to 1639

The younger branch that still held the hamlet in Smyth's own day runs back only four generations — John, son of John, son of Maurice, son of Robert, son of William. Volume three supplies the hinge: an escheated messuage of eighty acres “was lett by kinge H. 8. to the faid WITTM SWONHUNGER, FATHER OF ROBERT, FATHER OF JOHN”. William was a Crown lessee under Henry VIII, which dates the bottom of that pedigree to the 1520s–40s and matches the deeds of 1518–1523 by which the family bought their land from Thomas Lewes.

Two details of the ground, both his. Wanswell “nowe confifting of 14. dwellinge houfes, but heertofore of greater extent and embracinge the forefaid hamblet of Swonhunger” — so Swanhunger was carved out of Wanswell. And the freeholds of the two “in many places lye intermingled”, which is why the same families appear in both.

Read 14 September 2026 in the full text of The Berkeley Manuscripts, volumes 1 and 3 (1883–1885), free on the Internet Archive. Forty-four distinct passages mention the name; the index lists it under both Swanhunger and Saniger.

The Berkeley charters themselves, itemised in 1892

Errand 51 asked for the three Berkeley Castle groupings the modern catalogue names but does not itemise. It turns out the charters were itemised long ago: Isaac Herbert Jeayes catalogued them for Lord Fitzhardinge in 1892, and the book is out of copyright and free. documented

Three of the name, indexed as people

Jeayes indexes them separately from the place: THOMA DE SWANHUNGRE or SWONHUNGRE across six charters; ELYAS DE SWONHANGRE; and JOHN DE SWONHUNGRE. Elias and John are the forenames Smyth carries down the main line two and three generations later.

Isaac Herbert Jeayes, Descriptive Catalogue of the Charters and Muniments in the Possession of Lord Fitzhardinge at Berkeley Castle (1892), read 15 September 2026 in the free full text on the Internet Archive.

Seventy-one records, and the ones nobody here had seen

The National Archives' Discovery catalogue indexes what other repositories hold as well as its own. Searched on 14 September 2026 for every spelling, it returns seventy-one records under Saniger alone — and a run of Berkeley Castle deeds naming people “of Saniger” from before 1291 to 1473. documented

Six that change something

People “of Saniger”, before the surname existed

Unread and worth reading: the three Berkeley Castle groupings the catalogue names but does not itemise — “The Saniger purparty in Ham”, “The Saniger purparty in Wanswell” and “Acquisition of the Skinner holding in Saniger” — and GDR/B4/1/387, the 1768 defamation file. On the queue →

What this changes, and what it does not

1. "Of Berkeley" was never a loose label. It is where the name comes from. This archive should stop apologising for it and start saying it properly.
2. The cloth trade runs through the whole thing. A clothier at Saniger in 1692; weavers, tuckers and curriers at Cam and Dursley through the eighteenth century; and a family that leaves for Bristol when that industry collapses. The reconstitution →
3. There is a documentary spine at Gloucestershire Archives — D2957/41 — that nobody has opened, covering exactly the years Berkeley's parish transcript does not. Now on the queue →
4. The name has a meaning, and it is a landscape. Swanhanger — the wooded slope where the swans were, above the Severn. Every Saniger in this archive is named after a hillside. documented from 1377
5. And in 1608 a man of the name was living in it. John Sainger, weaver, is mustered in the tithing the survey writes as "Saniger [in Hinton parish, Berkeley]" — one of eleven men of the surname counted across Gloucestershire that year. documented The muster of 1608 →
6. There is a will to open. Elizabeth Saniger, widow of Thornbury, proved 24 December 1833. It is digitised at Kew.
7. And it still does not reach Hannah. Nothing here connects the Saniger landholders of Berkeley to the woman who married James Wakefield and went to Queensland. That join remains where it was: in a Bristol chapel register, or in Berkeley's own book after 1677.