Appletrewick

Appletrewick
by Robert J Becraft (castlewrks@aol.com)

In 1993, I was in England and took one of the days I was in London to go and do research instead of site-seeing. It was well worth my time and resulted in some of the earliest records I've ever personally found of Becraft's. What was interesting was that the references originate in and around Bolton Abbey in a small village named Appletrewick.

While inconsequential on their own, additional research based on another reference I ran across that attempts to identify sources for surnames, lead me to perform a similar analysis on the Becraft surname. Utilizing IGI records of Becraft/Beecroft/etc from England, I divided them up into 25 year segments and then using maps of England, highlighted the various locations listed in those references. What I discovered was a coalescing of names around the East Riding area of Yorkshire. Appletrewick is one of those locations that is in this area of consolidation.

This theory is based on the assumption that Appletrewick earned its name from possibly apple trees and that as a result of having apple trees, bees were kept as part of the industry, hence the origin of "Beecroft" as a surname.