309 Global Spensley Family Members

Spensley Family History

This name, with variant spellings Spencley, Spensly, and Spenclay, is particularly well recorded in church registers of Northern England from the mid 16th Century, and is a locational name from one of the estimated seven to ten thousand villages and hamlets that have now disappeared from the maps in Britain. Enforced 'clearing' and dispersal of the former inhabitants to make way for sheep pastures in the 14th Century was a prime cause of these 'disappearances', along with natural causes such as the Black Death of 1348.