Duries of the United Kingdom

We would like any Duries in Great Britain and Ireland or those with Durie connections who feel they could be included in this section to send us their names and some information about their lives and their families. Please send your story and if possible photographs as well. All will be reviewed and may be used in a Newsletter &/or posted on the website. Durie Family Association members will, we hope, be able to provide detail they have on parents, grandparents and ancestors to help us all build up our extended Family Tree.

There are a number of myths surrounding the origin of the name Durie. Some would have it of Norman origin, based on nothing more than the first two letters of the name. There is no record of any Norman of that or a similar enough name, either just after 1066, or in Domesday, or in Scotland in the two centuries that followed, in Scotland or England – or, for that matter, in France. There is a tantalising reference in a charter, probably from the early reign of Edward II and thus in the 1280s, of a knight called “Sir Roges de Purloc de Douery” in Somerset, England.

Can you throw any light on the 13th Century charter of Sir Roges?

Most of the published genealogies are misleading or downright wrong, including those in Wood’s East Neuk of Fife and Burke’s Peerage and Gentry (various editions). They confuse the three main lines – Durie of Durie (no longer landed), Durie of Craigluscar (represented by our Chief) and Durie of Grange (now extinct, who persuaded themselves but almost nobody else that they were the Lords Rutherford).

From whom are you descended? Are you a Durie form Fife, Angus, Glasgow, the Isle of Man, East Lothian, London or the West Country ? Please let us know about your Durie connections.