Du Val Family in Normandy

Manoir Du Val

Today the family name of Du Val or Duval is spread widely throughout the world. As it comprises two French words, clearly it originated in France. But not everyone so named necessarily shares a common origin. By the time surnames came into general use, there would have been very many families that were "of the valley". Fortunately, however, the particular family that is our present concern has a precisely known place of origin.

Sunny Morning near St Aubin

The small village of St Aubin-le-Guichard in Normandy lies in pastoral countryside between Caen, Rouen and Le Mans, and is now in the Department of Eure. Halfway between St Aubin-le-Guichard and Gouttieres, to the south west, lies a piece of land called le fief du Val held at the end of the eleventh century by Robert Du Val (1).

St Aubin-le-Guichard and its Manoir Du Val would have been peaceful enough places in the middle of the eleventh century, deep in the Duchy of Normandy, settled seven generations earlier by Vikings and not yet part of the kingdom of France.

All that changed dramatically in 1066 when William of Normandy sailed across the Channel and defeated the English army at the Battle of Hastings. Robert Du Val was among the victorious Normans.

He, or his son another Robert Du Val, was granted lands at Luddington and Wilnecote in Warwickshire near Stratford-on-Avon, while retaining the Du Val property in Normandy.

Early in the twelfth century the Du Val overlord Henry Beaumont (Earl of Warwick) was granted the newly colonised Gower peninsula in south Wales, and his knight Robert Du Val also received lands there. The direct male lines of the Du Val families who stayed behind in Wales and England were to die out in 1297 and 1360 respectively, although Elen Du Val of the Welsh branch married Prince Llewelyn ap Owen and so became the grandmother of Owen Glyndower, and great-great-grandmother of King Henry VII.

In 1169 the Norman invasion of Ireland was begun by the Earl of Pembroke (who had married the niece of the Earl of Warwick), and three sons of Robert Du Val went with him across the Irish Sea.

They were Gilbert Du Val, Stephen Du Val and Hay Du Val, progenitors of a multitude of Irish families, including the Wall Family of Dunmoylan.

Over the succeeding centuries the surname of their Irish descendants gradually evolved into Wall as they settled on their lands. Of these families the most Irish of them all was the Wall Family of Dunmoylan (2).

References

(1) The Wall Family in Ireland 1170 to 1970 by Hubert Gallwey (1970) pages 8-12.
(2) Their surname Wall even became translated into the native Irish language, the head of the family becoming known in the later Middle Ages as "Faltagh" of Dunmoylan. The Wall Family in Ireland 1170 to 1970 by Hubert Gallwey (1970) page 180.