18. CULMER ORIGINS

Baker Tree

 CULMER ORIGINS (18)

 

We can trace our Culmer ancestors back to Richard Culmer who was buried in 1485 in the church of St Peter in Thanet, in NE Kent. This was the year Richard III died and was replaced by the Tudor king Henry VII.

St Peter’s was a large parish that included what was then the fishing village of Broadstairs. The Culmers were a prominent family there long before Richard’s time.

Broadstairs gets its name from the flight of steps cut in the chalk cliff, from the cliff-top Shrine of St Mary down to the beach. In 1350, Charles Waldemar Culmer, son of Waldemar Culmer, is said to have reconstructed these stairs for the benefit of the fishermen.

In addition to Charles, the Find a Grave website has the following early memorials at St Peter’s church: Richard Culmer 1350-1434, Waldemar Culmer 1276-?, Waldemar Culmer 1247-?, Waldemar Culmer 1216-?.[1]

At least some, and possibly all of these may be our ancestors, but we have no confirmation of this.

The name Waldemar, popular in these early generations, is Germanic in origin.

Stephen Holbourn, in A Boatman’s Tale, gives the Culmer family tradition of their origins:[2]

The Kulmer’s Legacy.

“The various members of Culmer family seem to have inspired the little fishing port of Bradstowe, now Broadstairs, for by their efforts over many years, in having constructed the first pier there, and later defensive fortifications and the main Harbour road as such, contributed substantially to the development of that place.
“It is said that Gurth Kulmer and his two sons, Paul and James were baptised in 862 AD by the prior at Saint Gutlac. This was in the year that ‘the good Archbishop’ St. Swithens was to die, also a year that witnessed the bloody conflict between the Dane’s and King Alfred, Ethelburt’s brother. It is believed that Gurth was a son of Steven Kulmer, who with his father Knut Larson, ‘the Kulmer’ and his brother, Eric Kulmer along with their followers originally came to England.
“Existing Culmer Family folk lore holds that they came in company with a number of Danish vessels and settled south of the river Thames in Kent, in all probability calling in at Denton, near Gravesend, then the most important settlement for such migrants, whilst the Danish fleet continued on their journey. Denton in fact takes its name from ‘Dane town’. From Crayford extending east beyond Swanscombe (Sweyn’s Camp) nearby, to the remote and distant Isle of Thanet, the Danes occupied the land and terrorized the Saxon inhabitants, giving rise to much consternation amongst the locals who set about digging ‘Dene holes’, of which many have survived to this day. These were wells, cut deep into the chalk foundation of the landscape for the purpose of concealing people and goods, during such landings. In surveying the distribution of these deneholes, it would appear that Essex, on the northern shore of the Thames sustained a greater influx of these Vikings than did Kent, there being considerably more recorded deneholes in Essex, particularly around Orsett and Greys.
“To come more to particulars, it was in the fifth year of King Ethelburt that a Danish army wintered in the Kentish Isle of Thanet, from whence Denton, on the shore of the Thames was an easy sail with an upward tide and an easterly wind. ‘These robbers knew nothing of truth or good faith, for they realised that larger gains would come to them by pillage than by treaties. So that the league was scarcely concluded and the treasure paid over, than “like cunning foxes”, they scattered and by night left their camp and ravaged all the eastern side of Kent'”. with the result that Thameside and the surrounding area was literally infested with the Danish Galleys of the Northmen, as in fact was the Somme in France…
“The Kulmer family locates their probable origin to an island of that name, on the south eastern coast of Sweden.”

 

[1] https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery-browse/England/Kent/Thanet-District/Broadstairs?id=city_408039

[2] S.N. Holbourn, A Boatman’s Tale, Michael’s Bookshop, 2007.