There have been Killingworths in the Eastern counties of Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex (and peripherally in Northants, Bedfordshire and Lincolnshire) since at the least the 1500s. The evidence for this is in the parish registers and I assume that all the people bearing the name are related. The difficulty in drawing a family tree which will link them all is that so many of them have the same Christian name. We are reduced to sheer guesswork in trying to establish links.

The earliest mention of the name I can find is the de Killingworth family of Norman descent who lived at Long Benton and Killingworth itself just outside Newcastle. My assumption is that, at some medieval date, members of the Killingworth clan moved south down the Great North Road, hence the instances of the name in all the counties I have mentioned.

The Killingworth Killingworths overlap in time (the 16th century) those in East Anglia which is why I believe that the trip along the Great North Road is an early one. There were prominent Killingworths in London connected with the Drapers’ Company in the 16th century and in the 1450s a John Killingworth (an astronomer) was bursar of Merton college, Oxford. According to the Victoria County History, the Killingworths were one of the 37 ancient families of Northumberland.