Maunsell is a surname, also encountered as 'Mansel', 'Maunsel', and 'Mansell', and in some cases a cognate of 'Mansfield'. Per MacLysaght, of Norman origin, and closely associated with County Limerick and County Tipperary since the seventeenth century, but on record there and County Wexford as early as the thirteenth century. It has been stated that, the name being Norman in origin, numerous families of the name existed in Northern France for some generations prior to the Norman Conquest. Several branches of the Irish family are extensively treated in
Burke's Landed Gentry
''Burke's Landed Gentry'' (originally titled ''Burke's Commoners'') is a reference work listing families in Great Britain and Ireland who have owned rural estates of some size. The work has been in existence from the first half of the 19th cent ...
of Ireland.
[A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland, Sir Bernard Burke, Harrison & Sons, 1912, pp. 466-470]
Notable people with the surname include:
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Guy Maunsell
Guy Anson Maunsell (1 September 1884 – 20 June 1961) was the British civil engineer responsible for the design of the World War II Naval sea forts and Army forts used by the United Kingdom for the defence of the Thames and Mersey estuaries. ...
(1884-1961), British designer of the Maunsell Sea Fort defence system
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Richard Maunsell
Richard Edward Lloyd Maunsell (pronounced "Mansell") (26 May 1868 – 7 March 1944) held the post of chief mechanical engineer (CME) of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway from 1913 until the 1923 Grouping and then the post of CME of the ...
, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway and Southern Railway
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John Maunsell
Sir John Maunsell ( 1190/1195 – 1265), Provost of Beverley Minster, was a king's clerk and a judge. He served as chancellor to King Henry III and was England's first secretary of state.
Life
His grandfather, Robert Mansel, was a Templar u ...
, Cleric, Judge as well as Secretary of State and Chancellor to Henry III
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John H. R. Maunsell
John Henry Richard Maunsell (born 1955) is a British-American neuroscientist who is the Albert D. Lasker Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Associatio ...
(born 1955), British-American neuroscientist
See also
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Maunsell Forts
The Maunsell Forts are armed towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom. They were operated as army and navy forts, and named after their designer, Guy Maunsell. The forts were ...
, sea forts of the United Kingdom during the Second World War
References
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