The first noting of the name in Kent - available to me - appears in 1303 in the Court Manor rolls of Tremworth Manor, a manor which roughly approximates to modern day Crundale parish near Wye, a tiny isolated parish of a few families situated between Canterbury and Ashford.

Crundale appears to the very centre of the origin of the family with Bouldings and Bouldens living very near by even to this day. Hardly anyone of this name from Kent does not stem from this little parish.

There also appears to have been a connection between the Crundale Bollyngs (the earlier spelling variant of the name) and the Bollyngs of Whitstable in Kent because the family appear to have held land there in 1315 as noted in the Inquisitions Post Mortem. This connection lasted until the mid 17^th Century.

In the Inquisitions Post Mortem the name was noted as "de" Bullyng and there is a Bullinge Corner (NGR 120662) by the junction of All Saints Church, Whitstable, which strongly suggests that the name was taken from the place.

Another option as a possible origin of the name is from the old word "bollyng" meaning "to tipple" - not in the sense as is meant now "to drink" - tippling in early times meant "to brew beer".

The Boulding family, from the 14^th Century was regularly put before the Manor Court for the "Assize of Ale". The Assize of Ale was normally a fine levied for selling short measure or, indeed, bad beer or bread. However, a suggestion has been made that, rather than it being a fine per se, it was an early method of licensing brewing not dissimilar to that which we have today where the sale of alcohol is licensed.

The Boulding link with brewing was maintained until the mid 18^th Century when the family members were generally noted as maltsters and owned the Red Lyon pub in Wye, a small market town next to Crundale.

The name Boulding/en is also found today in Norfolk and Warwickshire and a few in Cornwall but more interestingly in north Holland and Denmark suggesting possible Saxon origins, for the suffix "ing" means "son of" in early English thus arriving at a meaning of "son of the bold".

There is also the famous Bolling family of Bolling Hall near Bradford, once a powerful family until they supported the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses and I have often wondered if the Kentish Bollyngs were an offshoot of this family.