This data was taken from Parish records to show where Keeps were located during the century. You will note from the list of counties below that it provides only an indication of the spread, and not the density of the Keep population in the county. Gloucestershire, for example, only recorded one event, the marriage of Robert to Anne Wadley in 1696. Whilst this is after the death of John Keep of Longmeadow, it does indicate a Keep presence in Gloucestershire during the 1600s. What the spread shows is that John’s ancestry could originate from a wide and diverse area.

This page is devoted to family histories and other items of interest about the British and Irish Keep families.

While Keeps in the distant past may have originated in Saxony, there seems to be no question that the ancestral home of English speaking Keeps is Great Britain.

Suggestions are welcome.

Our Saxon Connections Explored

During his research into the Keep family, Philip Keep of Norwich, England, consulted the Liber Winton, a survey of Winchester compiled in 1110, during the reign of Henry I, which had the following entry:

“In gerestret … Ulward Cheppe reddebat xviii d et consuetudinem TRE Modo Willrlmus scutarius debet idem”.

Which reads:

“In Gere Street … Wulfward Cheppe paid 18 pence and the custom in the time of King Edward now William the Ragman owes the same”.

According to Philip, the list of Saxon tenants in Winchester was compiled from a census conducted in 1056 during the reign of Edward the Confessor, which means that Wulfward Cheppe was a Saxon tenant at the time of the survey living in Gere Street, also known as Gerestrete or Garstret, Winchester.  He was one of 144 householders rendering their customary dues. The street remains today in Winchester, but it has now been renamed Trafalgar Street.

Unlike today’s standard orthography of one word, one spelling, this did not occur in Old English, so the Anglo-Saxons used a phonetic system.  In Old English a “k” sounded like “ch”; therefore, Wulfward Cheppe would have been Wulfward Keppe.  This demonstrates that a byname sounding like Keep was an established hereditary surname in England during the eleventh century.

The Doomsday Survey, which was completed in 1086, was commissioned by William the Conqueror to assess what taxes were due to him.  The title comes from the Old English word “Dom”, which means accounting or reckoning.  An entry for Hertfordshire shows a freeman “Kip”, more than likely a Saxon, was the tenant of a mill in Sawbridgeworth, rated a 20s that was owned by a Norman nobleman, Lord Geoffrey de Manderville.  Philip found other local references to support his theory that Keep was an established surname.  In 1229 a Ralph Kepe was noted as a merchant of Waterford, which is a village north of Hertford and six miles from Sawbridgeworth.  In 1259 a Ralph Kepe was shown at Beauchamp Roding, which is just over the county border in Essex, and eight miles away from Sawbridgeworth. A Robert Keppe was unlawfully killed in Hereford in 1270.  Considering that there was an established Keep family in Hertfordshire during the eleventh century, members of the family could easily have migrated to Buckinghamshire.  There is a possibility that they were the forefathers of Walter Kep.  Likewise he could have descended from Wulfward Cheppe.

The Saxon word “cepe” or “chepe” means “barter”, “merchant” or “the man who lives near the market”.  An example of its usage is Cheapside in London, which from the thirteenth century was a bustling market place for jewellery, shoes, bread, meat, spices, wine, etc.  So contrary to popular belief, did our name derive from our ancestors’ trading activities in the eleventh century, and not as gaolers?

An interesting point with regard to Winchester is that the main street, High Street, was known as Chepe Street in Anglo Saxon times.  Wulfward lived in a side road off of the main street, very close to the Cathedral.