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It's interesting to read your understanding of some of the ancient history of the clan.

It's encouraging that we also have had this idea of the name stemming from a d'Alquin as one of our family myths - without, it has to be said, any evidence of it being true! Here are a few more points which we have dredged up - again, mostly anecdotal.

The link before the 11th century is supposed to find its way as far as a monk by the name of Alcuin, who started his rise to fame in York some time in the 8th century, in the Bede school of learning.

It was some rise, too - he eventually held the post of Clerical Advisor to Charlemagne, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire: considering the importance of religious guidance to such a figure at such a time, this must have been a rather major post. He was given abbeys to run at Troyes and then Tours, at which he established important centres and traditions of (mainly theological) learning.

There is now a college in his honour at York University (www.york.ac.uk/univ/coll/alc), as well as a variety of centres (ranging from Montessori kindergartens to university libraries) in the US, some of which ascribe to him the status of sainthood - which I'm not sure about!

For more information see : www.diakonoi.org/naadalcu.html : www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/alcuin.html:
http://turnbull.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Alcuin.html :
www.mayo-ireland.ie/Mayo/Towns/MayAbbey/HistMAbb/Alcuin.html

The only member of the family to serve in the RAF and be killed in the Battle of Britain had this as one of his middle-names, and we understand from Canon Donald Allchin (a noted theologian, now at Oxford) that the line is supposed to be genuine. I, however, have one major problem with this: there seems to be a bit of a flaw in trying to find a link to an ancestor who was a serious cleric - and therefore supposedly proscribed from having any subsequent family-line by a vow of chastity! He was supposedly born into a noble family, so maybe if there is a link here, it was from a brother or cousin.

Thought I would just try a search of north-western France to see whether there might be any sign of 'our' apocryphal Norman village. Surprisingly enough, I found something! It's shown on the enclosed map - Alquines, about 30 miles east of Boulogne. This is a bit far north for Normandy, but it's known that there were a good number of Flemish supporters among the Norman Expeditionary Force, so it ties in quite well. My bet is that the village was named for the cleric, and that the d'Alquins were those who subsequently provided the resident lords of the manor: there are, after all, a good 200 years between the passing of Alcuin and the invasion.

I've not gone into the chain after the invasion in any detail - would be interesting to see if there's any mention of a d'Alquin (or something similar) in the Domesday Book.

The next link of which I've heard is of a manor near Rotherfield in the middle of the 15th century: this was run by a family named Alchorne, and I've found quite a few references to the connection between this name and what ours is now. The only heraldic symbol which I've ever found to be related to the family is a stag's head on a white field: this has been borne by our lot by family tradition, but in reality it is an Alchorne crest. I've also wondered if this might be a bit of a pun: 'Alchorne' is not far from 'elk horn', which is closer again to 'd'Alquin'. This link immediately associates us with this family - another name which is still around, as well as Alcorns and maybe Allkins, and quite probably a good number of other varieties from the same stem.

The bit of the family from which I derive, for what it's worth, is from mid-Kent, as with so many other branches: my great-grandfather lived in Leigh, near Tonbridge, my father was born and brought-up a way to the north of there, and we have since found ourselves in the county from time to time. My father was a pilot in the Air Force, so we moved about a lot, but I was at school in Canterbury, and we were based in Tonbridge for nearly ten years. Hope this is of some interest to you:

Michael Allchin
allch@globalnet.co.uk