If you are a Flowerdew or just generally interested then I gather Flowerdew may have been Fleur de Dieu, the Flax flower or the Fleur de lys Lily of the French Hugenots or similar. The clan appears alive and well living in Norfolk from the sixteenth century and although never numerous have spread to the far reaches of the globe.

They have produced some famous offspring, including mythical ones- there was a character Flowerdew in the Goon Show. In historical times the Flowerdews were involved with the Kett Rebellion against enclosure, though on the wrong side. Another Flowerdew was alleged the perpetrator of the demise of Amy Robsart/ Anne Dudley the wife of Lord Leicester the lover of Queen Elizabeth I.

The clan appears alive and well living in Norfolk from the sixteenth century

Flowerdews robbed the lead off Wymondham Abbey, first in the Reformation and then again during the Civil war resulting in there now being a dearth of buried Flowerdews there. A braver than average Flowerdew won a VC in the first world war. Another was the Andrew Lloyd Webber of between the wars and one of his tunes was played on a piano in one of the Jeeves and Wooster series. Apparently Freddie Flowerdew also appears on a theatre front in a Woody Allen film. More recently a Flowerdew had visions and was taken to Petra by the BBC where he revealed otherwise unknowable evidence of possible re-incarnation.

At the present day Flowerdews are remarkably prolific in the arts and sciences with several published authors amongst the but few hundred of a now worldwide clan. Apparently one is buried under the main runway of the Seychelles airport and others were amongst the earliest founders of America- see the Flowerdew Hundred archaelogical dig in Virginia -and there is even a Flowerdew Polka.