As we have seen, the family name was taken from Nuttall near Ramsbottom, a fertile spur of land on the banks of the Irwell “where the nuts grew”. There the family had settled at an early date and were well established by 1208, the date of the the first record of  a Noteho.

Under the feudal system, they held their land from the Lord of the Manor of Tottington, who at that time was Robert de Lacy. They would have had their activities severely restricted by Forest Laws during the previous century, for in 1176 Holcombe Forest had been given by de Lacy’s predecessor, Roger de Montbegon, to a community of Yorkshire monks, for the well being of his soul. Three thousand acres of woodland, pasture and moorland covering Alden, Longshaw, Harcles, Holcombe, Quarlton, Holcombe Brook (Saltergate), through Tittleshaw to Brookhouse were then put “out of bounds” for development by native farmers. The spirited reaction of long-established, pre-Conquest settlers, such as the Nuttalls, may be measured by a stern and detailed warning given to the monks in the deed of gift (1176) and reinforced in 1236 by Roger de Montbegon. This urged the monks to avoid confrontation and stressed that they should respect the “ancient rights” of the “men of Tottington”. The de Notehoes would be their nearest neighbours!

There was little enough land fit for cultivation – here were no broad acres of fertile arable land “as far as the eye could see”. There was always a craggy hill to block the view and challenge the push-plough. The low lying valleys were often flooded, and permanently marshy and thick with vegetation. They were slowly being cleared at this time but still prey to the local wild life, so that only dairy farms or “vaccaries” were possible. Indeed, Jordan del Bothe’s wife, out of her stock of 50 cows, 1 bull, 5 oxen and 17 calves, had one of the calves “strangled by the wolf”. In the next century, a third of the population was annihilated by the Black Death and the Scottish Wars, when de Lacy led an attack for which he took 1,000 men from Lancashire. In spite of this, improved methods enabled more land to be cleared for agriculture, whilst sheep farming on the uplands gave the economy a great boost. But the hard struggle had seen the end of feudalism – there were no more bondsmen – just a reduced community of small farmers of equal status fighting the soil together.

The Manor of Tottington was annexed to the Duchy of Lancaster when a daughter and heiress of the de Lacy family married Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, but on his attainder and sub­sequent execution in 1321, the Duchy passed to the Crown and the Manor became the “Royal Manor of Tottington”. So that when Henry VII released his forests and wastes by Act of Parliament to local freeholders, the Nuttall family and their neighbours took the welcome opportunity of enlarging their estates. Cadet branches were installed at Hawkshaw, Little Holcombe and Holcombe, but the branch of the family at Tottington seems to have taken some already cultivated land from the De Bury family.