The Chambers' Family History
Introduction
There appears to have been a long and enduring connection between the Chambers family and the parish of Swaffham Prior. The oldest recording of the name in the parish is that of Symon Chamber who appears on a 1290 court roll belonging to Swaffham Prior manor. He is possibly synonymous with the Symon Chamber of Dry Drayton, a manorial family that owned land in several local parishes. From 1290 onwards there is a continuous record through to the 1880s.
It would appear that the Chambers of Swaffham Prior started life as part of the minor landed gentry but, by the 1880s, were gentleman farmers (yeomen). John Chambyr's 1486 will indicates that he owned a farm with several outbuildings, an orchard and many acres of farmable land, most of which was devoted to cereal crops. The size of this landholding seems to have increased over the following century reaching its peak in the 1630s, just before the English Civil War. After this the family's fortunes seem to wax and wane a bit reaching a low point in the late 18th century when much land went out of the family through being sold, through marriage of daughters or, in at least one case, bad debts. Things picked up again in the early 19th century when the remaining Chambers in Swaffham Prior shifted their farming operation from around the village of Reach to the northern end of the parish where they held much land.
However, from the parish records and wills it is possible to see that the increasing size of families was causing what were once large tracts of family land, to be spilt several ways amongst the children. As land disappeared out of the family, so many of the Chambers children decided to uproot themselves from the parish and seek their fortune elsewhere. My direct ancestor left Swaffham Prior in the 1870s for the London suburbs while another large branch of the family moved themselves to Nottingham where their descendants still remain. Although there are still Chambers in the parish of Swaffham Prior (some of whom are farmers), as far as I am aware they are not linked to my ancestors the last of whom would appear to have left the parish in the opening years of the twentieth century.
During its Tudor and Stuart heyday, the Chambers family intermarried with some of the other manorial families from the parish including the following: Drury, Tothills (=Totehill, Tothyll), Lee, Waters, Baldwin, Manning and Cook.
Links to Further Documents concerning the Chambers