14,574 Global BARFIELD Family Members

BARFIELD Family History

This is a locational English surname, but ones whose roots may have been lost. It is well recorded in London from the mid 16th century, a period which saw great changes in the British countryside with the onset of the earliest industrial revolution. At this time following the Great Plagues there was a shortage of skilled farm workers, and the landowners seized the opportunity to convert lands to sheep farming. Some five thousand villages 'disappeared' between the year 1550 and 1750, and today only the surname remains to remind us of their existence.