Place Name
Thought to be a misspelling of Sir Christopher Clitherow’s name. Clitherow (January 10, 1578 – November 11, 1641) was Lord Mayor of London and governor of the East India Company. Sometime before 1640 he bought the Middlesex manor of Ruislip, with a house at Pinner, this included ownership of Pinner Hill part of the 135 acre Pinner Wood, known as Spinnells. Clitherow died at his house in Pinner and was buried in the church of St Andrew Undershaft, where he had been a churchwarden, seven days later. In his will, dated April 14, 1640, he left £100 to his wife Mary, and settled Ruislip manor on his son James, together with some lands in Hertfordshire. Another son, Thomas, obtained a small-holding in Essex. Sir Christopher had been born into a wealthy family, a descendant of either Richard Clitheroe, a wealthy Kent landowner who moved to London in the mid-1380s from the Lancashire town from which he took his name, or from Richard’s (presumed) brother, William, who also settled in Kent. The family’s business interests in the City were already firmly established by the time that his father Henry Clitherow was born. But Christopher did much to extend the family’s extensive financial interests which included trading cloth to Germany, importing wine, and providing the navy with cordage. In October 1604 he invested £240 in the East India Company five years later was instructed by the Ironmongers’ to buy shares worth £50 in the Virginia Company. His wise investments meant that he died a very wealthy man.
