Bleakley

The most significant and prevailing theme throughout the history of the Bleakley ancestry had been that of the Celtic influence, otherwise known as The Celtic Interlace where descendants came from many countries and included an assortment of cultural diversity. Relatively recent Bleakley descendants had been traced to Ireland, but based on information pertaining to the surname Bleakley it has become evident that a major line of direct descendants before them came to Ireland from England.

The Bleakley name generally acknowledged as having been derived from the Old English name Blaecleagh and pronounced (b-lāke-lee), is the combination of two words, each of which had distinct meaning in ancient Anglo Saxon Britain 400AD to 1066AD. The words when translated, “blaec” meant a dark forest and “leagh” meaning a clearing near the forest. Blaecleagh, was the name used to describe an area in ancient England where people lived during the ‘Middle Ages’. The evocative ‘blaecleagh’ was first used as a description of those individuals, “living in a clearing near the forest”.

During the ‘Middle Ages’ in England, communities of people began to be known by where they lived, using locality names as their surname. The ‘Domesday Book’ of surnames, showed that the Blackley parish (village), a characteristic evolution of ‘Blaecleagh’, was found near Manchester, England and was described in 1086, “The undistinguished little settlement of BLACKLEY contained twelve mills and 107 inhabitants”.