In July 1695 an Edinburgh merchant named George Warrender bought the Bruntsfield estate from William Fairlie, and three centuries later his surname is still printed on the street signs, the park and the swimming pool.
Few Scottish families have left a city so thoroughly labeled. Fewer still did it starting from a job title that involved rabbits.
What Did a Warrender Actually Do?
He kept the game. The Oxford-backed surname dictionaries file Warrender as a Scottish and English variant of Warriner "with intrusive -d-", and Warriner is a northern English occupational name for a gamekeeper, "someone whose job was to watch over game in a park", from Old French warrennier: a warrener.
A medieval warren was not a wild burrow but a managed enclosure held under a grant of right and worth defending against poachers, and the man who ran it was well-paid staff. Scots speech then pushed a d into the middle of the word, exactly as Bruntsfield still alternates with Bruntisfield.
Scotland kept a shelf of these hunting-office names: the Forresters of Corstorphine held the king's woods on Edinburgh's western edge, the Falconers handled the birds, and Fullarton in Ayrshire is the fowler's farm.
Who Was the First Sir George Warrender?
A trader who ended up running the city. Born about 1658 and fatherless in infancy, he made his money in foreign trade at Edinburgh, and in 1705 joined a syndicate granted the farm of the customs and foreign excise of Scotland for three years, which is where a merchant stops being merely prosperous.
He was Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1713 to 1714. A Whig and a supporter of the Hanoverian succession, he took the city's seat in Parliament at the 1715 general election and was created a baronet, of Lochend in the County of Haddington, on 2 June 1715. He died in London on 4 March 1721 and was buried at Bunhill Fields.
Note where the baronetcy points: Lochend is in East Lothian, the sort of country anchor described in our history of the name Congalton. Accounts of the Bruntsfield buying year differ, his own biography placing it two decades before the July 1695 conveyance recorded for the estate, so treat the date as approximate until the sasine is read.
How Did One Family's Fields Become Marchmont?
By feuing, patiently, over four decades.
The Warrenders began feuing their Bruntsfield land in 1872, and out of that came Marchmont: street after street of tall tenement blocks running south from the Meadows. The work was finished by 1915, with only about seven acres left around the house, and many of the street names still carry the family, Warrender Park Road and Warrender Park Terrace among them.
Bruntsfield House survived all of it, passing into council ownership and serving since the 1970s as the main administrative block of James Gillespie's High School. Families whose names ended up on public ground are not unheard of, as our account of the Duthies and their Aberdeen park shows, but few managed a whole postcode.
Why Does Edinburgh Have a Warrender Swimming Pool?
Because it was built on Warrender ground and took the name with it.
Warrender Baths opened as a private facility on Thirlestane Road on 17 December 1887, and Warrender Baths Club formed there the following year. The club won the first Scottish National Water Polo Championship in 1901 and later produced the Olympic medalists Ellen King and David Wilkie.
A peculiar afterlife for an occupational name: the warrener's word shouted across a pool, in a city where names like Inglis stayed attached to land instead.
What Happened to the Baronetcy?
It ran the distance, then changed its name.
Sir Patrick Warrender, 3rd Baronet, fought at Minden in 1759 and was King's Remembrancer of the Court of Exchequer from 1771 to 1791. His son Sir George, 4th Baronet, born at Dunbar on 5 December 1782, sat for five constituencies, was a Lord of the Admiralty from 1812 to 1822, and collected the nickname "Sir Gorge Provender", which tells you what his contemporaries made of his appetite. He died childless in 1849.
Sir George John Scott Warrender, 7th Baronet, born 1860, reached vice admiral in the Royal Navy and died in 1917. His son Victor, the 8th Baronet, was raised to the peerage in 1942 as Baron Bruntisfield, so an estate bought by a customs farmer in the 1690s ended up as a twentieth-century peer's title.
How Do You Trace a Warrender Line?
- Search Warrender, Warriner, Warrener and Warender as one set. The -d- is not stable and clerks dropped it freely.
- Do not fold Warrand into the search. It descends from Warren, a different word entirely.
- Work Edinburgh and East Lothian first, then Midlothian. This is a Lothian name in practice, whatever the northern English origin of the word.
- For the landed branch use sasines, retours and testaments rather than baptisms, the standard approach for the Lowland families.
- Come backward from a statutory certificate with our introduction to ScotlandsPeople.
Own a Piece of Warrender Heritage
A gamekeeper's job title turned into a provost, a baronetcy, a district of Edinburgh and a swimming club still racing today. The surname turns up here on a mug, a garden flag and a framed keepsake ornament, the family crest sitting against tartan. This is a baronetcy and not a clan, and no weave was ever assigned to it, so the cloth is heritage styling; our article on who may wear which tartan shows where the real limits sit.
Warrender Crest and Tartan Garden Flag
Frequently Asked Questions About the Warrender Name
What does Warrender mean?
A warrener: the keeper of a game park or rabbit warren, from Old French warrennier, with a d pushed into the middle.
Is Warrender a Scottish surname?
The dictionaries label it Scottish and English, and the word behind it is Old French by way of northern England. The family history is Edinburgh from the seventeenth century onward.
Was Bruntsfield really Warrender land?
Yes. George Warrender bought the estate in the 1690s and his descendants feued it from 1872, which is where the Marchmont street names and Warrender Baths come from.
Is there a Clan Warrender?
No. This is a baronetcy created in 1715, with nothing answering to a chief or a clan society behind it, as our A to Z of sept names makes clear.
Sources and Further Reading
- Geneanet: Warrender — the Oxford reading, a variant of Warriner with intrusive -d-.
- Geneanet: Warriner — the gamekeeper definition and Old French warrennier.
- Sir George Warrender, 1st Baronet — the customs syndicate, provostship and baronetcy.
- Warrender baronets — the succession to the 1942 barony.
- Sir George Warrender, 4th Baronet — the seats and the nickname.
- Bruntsfield, Edinburgh — the 1695 sale, the feuing from 1872 and the house today.
- Warrender Baths Club — the baths of 1887 and the swimmers.
- Warrender in the 1901 Scottish census — 249 bearers, ranked 1,871st.
- ScotlandsPeople — National Records of Scotland registers, sasines and testaments.
A word for the man who watched over rabbits ended up on a provost's chain, a baron's title and a lane full of tenements. Browse the Warrender designs, drawn from a catalog of over 2,000 names.