Recorded in several forms including Presland, Pressland, Prestland, and Priestland, this is an English surname. It is locational from either a place called Priestland Copse near Bampton in the county of Devonshire, or from Priestlands near Horley in the county of Surrey, or possibly from Pressland, near Hatherleigh, also in Devonshire. The translation is "The land belonging to the priests", and it is recorded that the place in Surrey originally belonged to the priory of Reigate. It is probable that the two Devon sites had a similar association with a monastery or some other religious settlement, which may have been suppressed in 1535 by King Henry V111th (1510 - 1547). Locational surnames are usually "from" names. That is to say names given to people after they left their original villages to more some where else. In so doing they took, or more likely were given, as their surname, the name of their former homestead, this being the easiest way to identify a stranger. Such names are always liable to transposition in their spelling. The earliest known recordings is probably that of Roger de Presland in the tax rolls know as the Feet of Fines for the county of Essex in the year 1305. This was during the reign of king Edward 1st of England, (1272 - 1307).

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