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The society of Anglo-French Clays was started in the early days of 2024 as a spin off from The Clay society of England, it was started as a result of finding Walterus de Clais, a Frank, in the Cambridge section of the Domesday book.

There have been suggestions from academics that he came from the village of Clais in Normandy.

Edmund del Clay of Finningley, Lawyer to Edward III mistress, Alice Perrers. He served as Chief Justice of the pleas in Ireland under Richard II.

There is a lot of disinformation on the internet about a Sir John Clay, coal Baron of Wales, he is a figure of fiction but believed by many to be real, he is not and this website deconstructs the myth.

The surname of Clay is documented in the County of Derbyshire from the time when surnames were first given to ordinary people back in the 1200s. The name is most likely occupational and was probably first given to a man who made his living excavating clay and supplying it to various trades. It is in the north of the county where the Clay's multiplied extensively around the parish of North Wingfield, although there were some early Clay's in the town of Derby. The 13th century “Charters of Darley Abbey”, which was located near Derby, mentions a land transaction between the years 1214 and 1233, when Abbott Henry granted Adam del Clay a messuage of land in Derby for an annual rent of 20 pence, and between 1236 and 1251 Richard del Clay rents 1 acre of land at Normanton in Derby from the same Abbey for 1 farthing. Also in 1266 Peter son of Henry de Clay had a house and land near St Michaels Church in Derby, at an annual rent of 2 shillings and sixpence, rented from the same Abbey.

For information on the mythical Sir John Thomas Clay, coal Baron of Wales. (click below)

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