The name Liddle comes from the Old English hlud dael meaning loud dale (ie a valley with a loud river running through it). Liddel Water runs through the Liddesdale valley on the English-Scottish border joining the River Esk near Carlisle in north-west England. It appears most Liddle families originate in the Borders region. Ours can be traced to the English parishes of Lowick, Ancroft and Norham in far northern Northumberland and, later, Coldstream in Berwickshire, Scotland.
“Liddesdale Scotland is the much contested district of the border and forms the wedge-like termination of Roxburghshire, running a little into Dumfreshire. Thomas Wake claiming Liddesdale caused a long border warfare in 1566. Liddesdale belonged to the crown and the most notable of its fortresses or Peel Towers is the Castle Hermitage, where Queen Mary visited Bothwell in 1566. Hermitage Castle is said to have been built by Lord Nicholas de Sules about the year 1244, who then owned all of Liddesdale. This castle is the best existing example of a border fortress in Scotland. Its remote position in the midst of a stretch of desolate country and on the edge of a deep morass bears out the grim character of the tales associated with it. The Sules family forfeited their estate in 1320 and Hermitage went to the Grahams’ and then by marriage of Mary Graham, to the Knight of Liddesdale, William Douglas. In 1492 Patric Hepburn, first Earl of Bothwell, exchanged Bothwell Castle on the Clyde, for Hermitage and Liddesdale. On the forfeiture of Francis Stewart, the last Earl of Bothwell, Hermitage went by grant to the Earl of Buccleuch, and is still owned by his descendants. Not far from Liddesdale, was fought the battle of Flodden Field where on September 9, 1513, so many Scotsmen perished. The ancient name of the river was Lid. The modern name of Liddle or Liddal includes both the name of the stream and the dale or del through which it flows. The addition of dale to Liddel, is a pleonasm, del and dale meaning the same. However, the name Liddle, Lyddel as applied to the river appears to have been established by the year 1250 or possibly earlier, through the ancient name sometimes appears much later. The manner of spelling the valley’s name varied so much in different localities and epochs of history that derivatives are bewildering. The spellings most frequently found are, Liddisdaill, Lyddesdale, Liddersdale, etc., with Liddesdale being the present established form. Documents have not been found recording the direct line of lineage from the family of Lord Sules to the Liddle ancestry, but in A. Jeffrey’s History of Roxburghshire, Vol. IV, is recorded a Randolph de Sules of the family of Lydal, who was made Provost of Roxburgh in 1296. That family of Sules Lords, as they were named Sules, built Hermitage Castle and were later Lords of Liddesdale. These Sules Lords are buried in a small enclosure beside Hermitage Castle. It is hardly disputable that the Liddles are other than a branch of this Lydal family of Randolph de Sules, because both the names Liddle and Liddesdale have undergone many different forms of spelling since the thirteenth century. In official records and historical documents there are numerous instances where the same parcel of land or family name is referred to with a variation in spelling. In Vol. IV, History of Roxburghshire, Jeffrey also records a Richard de Sules whose family name was Lydal marrying in 1279 a Muriel Lobdel of Robertson. This town is about two miles from New Castleton