Shortly after his victory in the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror rewarded all his faithful Norman supporters by dividing up England and giving them large areas of land captured from the saxon kings. One such supporter, also known as William, was given a large part of Lancashire. William decided to build his home in what today forms the south west Lancashire plain and according to Wikipedia, William's home was built from brick. During this time large brick buildings would have been extremely rare, unlike the name William, which would have been very common. It was around this time that surnames became popular to differentiate between people of a given name, so William that made barrels would have been known as William Cooper, William that made arrows would have been called William Fletcher and William that didn't make anything at all, but lived in a big brick home, would have been known as William of the brick home, or William de Lathe Hom, as the Norman Nobility might have said. The name Lathom could be derived from the mediæval Latin word Latomus, which means stonemason or quarryman. Over the past millennia there have been many recorded variations, on the name Lathom, such as: Latham, Lathem, Lathom, Lathan, Lathen, Leatham and Leathom. In Middle English, the word lathe meant a barn, granary or storehouse. In Old English, Lathe was a word used to describe a part of or a division of a county into a number of Hundreds. The word ham meant a plot of enclosed ground or a meadow and in Old English hom meant home. So our William could equally have been the William who lived in a barn or even the William who owned several of the Lancashire Hundreds. Whatever the true etymology of the name, over the course of a few decades it eventually became Lathom.
In 1807, Thomas Baines, wrote:
....."The honour of Lancaster, with nearly the whole of the lands of the present county of Lancaster, was granted by William the Conqueror to one of his great military followers, Roger of Poictou, soon after the battle of Hastings, fought in the year 1066. The date of the grant to Earl Roger was probably about the year 1068, for Matthew Paris and other authors inform us, that William returned from a visit to Normandy in the year 1068, and then proceeded to bestow the lands of the Saxon nobles and thanes on his own followers, with a lavish hand." (Baines 1807, p.336).
The same book goes on to explain that just 6 years later, William the Conqueror's favoured nobles joined together in a conspiracy to:
....."dethrone the Conqueror, and again to divide England into three parts, corresponding with the Saxon division of the kingdoms of the West Saxons, Mercia, and Northumbria."
Thomas Baines names the conspirators as:
....."Adolfus, earl of Norfolk and Suffolk, Earl Waltheof of Northumberland, and Earl Koger [sic] of Poictou, each of whom was to have had a third of the kingdom."
The estates of these three men were seized and this is shown in the Domesday Book of 1086, with the land marked as belonging to the crown. However:
....."In the interval between the granting of these estates to Earl Roger and their forfeiture, the earl granted portions of them to several Norman knights, some of whose descendants still hold the lands granted to their ancestors at the Conquest. In the hundred of West Derby, Earl Roger granted lands to Norman knights named Goisfrid, Roger, William, Warren, a second Goisfrid, Tetbald, Robert, and Gislebert..."
This may have been our William de Lathe Hom.
The earliest confirmed instance of the Lathom family, I've found so far, belongs to Robert Fitz-Henry, Lord of Lathom, circa.1190. This is the same Robert de Lathom, who founded the Augustinian Priory at Burscough in 1198, and was known to own various estates throughout the West Derby Hundred. We know from Robert de Lathom's Family Tree that his father was Henry de Torbock and Lathom, son of Siward, son of Dunning, and said to be a descendant of Orm. The same family tree can be seen Here within Mike Royden's Local History Pages.There is an interesting page dedicated to these earliest Lathom family members on geni.com
in 1385 that Isabella de Lathom, being the oldest daughter of parents who had no male heir, married Sir John Stanley and the Latham and Stanley families became forever linked
The House with all the goods within it was to goe amongst the Souldiers, who pulled the lead off all the Turret, with all those leaden troughes, like vnto cisterens, which they salted Beeffe in were all pulled asunder and sould. And this was remarkable, that the Wiggon men, great Caviliers, much in the favour of the Earle a town which he had great confidence in above any other in the county - these very men were most forward to buy the Leades, and to deface that Honourable House more than others. It appeared the tyde was turned. Much of that famous House (like a little Towne in itselfe) was pulled downe and cast into the Mote that is about it, so that it is nothing in comparison of what it was. It was the glorie of the County. The Earles, Lords thereof, were esteemed by most about them with little lesse respect than Kings.