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The name Hilditch is derived from a small village, no longer in
existence, called HILLDYKE. The village was situated in Staffordshire
on the border between Cheshire, Staffordshire and Lancashire.

There are a couple of possibilities for the origin or meaning of the
name:

1. The village got it's name from the Saxon words HEILDH which meant
something like "homestead" and DIGE which meant a slope. Hence HILDITCH
means "house (or homestead) on a slope".

2. Literally a person who lived on the slope of a hill.

If you find an Ordnance Survey map for Staffordshire and then look up
the villages of Audley and Wybunbury, the village of Hildyke was
situated somewhere between the two.

The first reference to the name Hilditch was in 1590 when Randle
HILDITCH is recorded as living in Alsager, Cheshire (where my
gg-grandfather Frederick was born) in the "Wills of Chester" The same
publication also has an Alice Hilditch living in Battesley, Cheshire in
1654.

The Staffordshire Hilditches were quite well known potters in the 18th
and 19th century; quite a number worked the coal mines; while a lot of
the womenfolk ended up as domestic servants - no dukes, earls etc that I
have ever heard of :-)

The name Hilditch is related to the names HILDIKE, HILLDIKE, HILDICK,
HILLDICK and HILDICH. None of them are very common. There are quite a
number around Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, Lockarbriggs in
Scotland, Hitchin in Hertfordshire and Basingstoke in Hampshire. I do
know of a small number that live in Belfast. There are 70 or 80 Hilditch
families living in Australia (where I live).