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PLACE- AND

Robert Spence Watson Memorial Lecture
% delivered before the Liter ^ry an/^ .Bhilssophical
^y Society, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, ^ptemj^er.ip 1922

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ALLEN MAWJER,, M;A.. s fj^^fy^^

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Published for the Survey of English
Plaee-p^^ms^

XIVEpPpOL
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF LIVERPOOL I^TD,

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PLACE-NAMES
AND HISTORY

Robert Spence Watson Memorial Lecture
delivered before the Literary and Philosophical
Society, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, September 25, 1922

BY

ALLEN MAWER, M.A.

Published for the Survey of Knglish
Place-names

LIVERPOOL
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF LIVERPOOL LTD.
LONDON
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1922

Any author's profits arising from the sale of
this Lecture will go to the Funds
of the Survey

Dm (o. 6i4

V

NOTE
In publishing this lecture, whose sole purpose is to
further the interests of the Survey of English Place-
names now being carried on under the patronage of
the British Academy, two words of cordial acknowledg
ment are due. The first is to Professor F. M. Stenton,
whose advice and criticism in this as in aU else that
has to do with the Survey, have been of the greatest
help to the author ; the second to the Literary and
Philosophical Society of Newcastle-on-Tyne, to whose
kindness the author is indebted for the occasion of its
delivery.
A.M.

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
TN delivering the Spence Watson Memorial Lecture
it is a matter at the same time both of duty and
of keen personal pleasure for me to pay an opening
word of tribute to the great Northumbrian in whose
honoured memory it was founded,
^^^len I first came to Newcastle some thirteen years
ago Dr. Spence Watson was still a leader in all
educational and philanthropic work. His health was
already extremely precarious, but one still saw flashes
of the great leader of men, of the student eager alike
for the promotion of learning and for the dissemination
of all the great and good things which learning can
give to men. He himself, both by speech and writing,
had done much to revive our interest in those great
pioneers of learning and letters who made early
Northumbria famous throughout Western Europe.
His whole life and work were standing proofs of the
entire difference between chauvinist nationalism and
true patriotism. To the former he was utterly
opposed by birth, instinct, and upbringing. Inspired
by the latter he showed himself a great lover of
England, still more of English speech, English letters,
and English history. They were to him the very
breath of life and in him they lived again. In venturing
to-night to speak to you upon Place-names, a subject
finding its very roots in English soil and English
history, one would fain hope that some breath of
inspiration from the man whom we are assembled to
honour may fall on one who, however imperfectly,
would desire to promote the same broad and humane
ideals' of study for which he himself stood.

6 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
From the earliest times civilised men have been
interested in the origin and meaning of the names
of places. Historians indulged freely in speculations
upon their meaning. Sometimes they may have hit
upon the truth, but as a rule their speculations were
based upon an entirely inadequate or false basis of
philological knowledge. When the Venerable Bede
tells us of the flight of St. Wilfrid to Selsey in Sussex,
he informs us that Selceseu means ' island of the marine
cow,'^ and he is probably correct if by his vitulus
marinus he means a seal, for it is quite possible that they
may then have frequented the Sussex coast. More
puzzling is his interpretation of Strenceshalc, the scene
of the Synod of Whitby, as ' bay of the lighthouse,'^
if indeed that is the proper rendering of the Latin
sinus fari, and one knows to what lively controversy
his rendering of the old name for Gateshead as caput
caprae, ' the head of the goat,'^ has led. Asser, in his
Life of Alfred,'^ gives us Celtic and Latin renderings of
Snotengaham, the old name for Nottingham. They are,
respectively, Tigguo-cubauc and speluncarum domus,
and Celtic and Latin alike mean ' house of caves,'
which is curiously apt in its description of Nottingham,
but cannot possibly be a rendering of the O.E.
Snotengaham, which clearly contains a patronymic.
A little later the author of a life of St. Oswald tells
us that the island of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire has
been quite fittingly so called from the Latin ramts,
' branches,' and the English ig, ' an island,' for ' the
island is as it were hedged round by great trees. '^
The interest of this monstrous hybrid is only excelled
by that of the etymology which Prior Fossour suggested
for Findon Hill near Durham. He is writing to
Bishop Hatfield after the Battle of Neville's Cross and,
when mentioning that the pursuit of the Scots

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 7
continued as far as Findon, he adds, perhaps by
way of academic jest, that the place may have been
prophetically so called as there the Jin had been
finally donne to the wars between the English and the
Scots.^ Such etymologies are seldom correct, but they are
always interesting ; and in this, as in other matters of
legendary history, it is well to remember that what
people believed to be the truth is often more important
historically than the truth itself.
In more recent times historians who have done
great service to English, and more especially to
Anglo-Saxon history, have turned again to place-names
as a source of historical knowledge. John Mitchell
Kemble based his far-reaching theories of family and
tribal settlement of Early England, his famous ' mark-
theory,' largely upon the evidence of place-names.
Wherever he found names in -ing like Harling (Norf.),
or in -ingham like Walsingham {ib.), or in -ington like
Billington (Staffs.), he was inclined to interpret them
as containing plural patronymic forms. Thus Harling
means ' the sons of Hserel,' Walsingham means ' home
stead of the sons of Waels,' and Billington ' farm of the
sons of Billa.' All such names are taken as evidence
for some form of family settlement. Further, he
believed that such names should be closely associated
with settlements on the Continent involving the same
personal names. We must thus link up the Wcelsings
of Norfolk with the Volsung family of Scandinavian
saga, whose most famous member was Sigurd himself.'
Now there is no doubt of the existence of names of these
types in England and the first two are specially frequent
in the districts first settled, but when we look at the
names more closely and examine their early forms we
find that, in a large number of these names, the ing

8 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
element, in the present day form, whether simple or
compound, medial or final, goes back to something
quite different in Old Enghsh and has no significance
so far as any settlement is concerned.
In still more recent times Dr. Round has advanced
a most interesting theory with regard to the Saxon
settlement of Britain based on a study of the -ingham
names in Sussex^ and their distribution in relation
to the rivers ; but though his conclusions are in the
main correct, the evidence is to some extent vitiated by
the fact that even so careful a scholar as Dr. Round
has overlooked the fact that some of the hams go back
to O.E. hamm rather than to O.E. ham. Now the
latter suffix, the ancestor of our modern home, whatever
its exact meaning in place-names may be, must have
some historical significance in any treatment of the
question of the Saxon settlement, but the former
simply denotes ' a confined space,' or ' a bend in a river,'
and is of purely topographical significance.
So far, then, we have full recognition of the value
of place-names as a possible source of historical
knowledge but false or unsatisfactory conclusions drawn
from them. In all alike the causes are the same.
Too much reliance has been placed on present-day
forms or on forms of comparatively recent origin, and
there has been a failure to collect adequate evidence
as to the ultimate history of the name.
It is only within the last twenty years or so, largely
owing to the pioneer efforts of the late Professor Skeat,
that the great truth has been established which lies at
the base of all place-name study, viz., that it is impossible
to place any satisfactory interpretation upon the
history of a name until we have traced it as far back as
the records will allow, and that in many cases, unless
the records go a good way back, speculations upon its

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 9
meaning are worse than useless. With the assertion
of this cardinal truth place-name study passed at
once out of the phase of speculative guesswork and
became an exact science in which, so far as adequate
evidence has been preserved, valid conclusions can be
drawn which may be of real value to the historian.
Before dealing with these conclusions one may,
however, point out certain gains incidental to these
discoveries, whose value the historian vsdll readily
recognise. In our early records the sites of the chief
incidents of our history, the scenes of its battles,
sieges, treaties, and the like, are naturally recorded
in the forms in use at that time. In very early
documents, such as Bede's Ecclesiastical History and
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, these forms are at times
so very different from their modern descendants that
their identification is often a matter of great difficulty.
Until a few years ago it was largely a matter of
guesswork, and even to the present day many false
identifications, with consequent vitiation of the history
based on them, are current in our textbooks. Study
of the historical development of the modern name
will often explode the traditional identification and,
what is more satisfactory, knowledge of the old forms
of some other name will often reveal the correct one.
The Chronicle mentions two great fights at
Wodnesbeorg in the struggle for supremacy between
Wessex and Mercia.* This has been traditionally
identified with Wanborough in Wiltshire.^" It was
enough that each contained a w, an n, and a b, and
that the site was not impossible. When we go back,
however, in the history of the name we find that
Wanborough was Weenbeorgan in Saxon times^^ and
cannot possibly be the same as Wodenesbeorg, whereas
there actually is a barrow in Alton Priors in Wiltshire

10 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
which we know, on the authority of a Saxon Charter
of 825, to have been called Wodnesbeorg^^ The name
is no longer extant, the barrow being now knovvn as
Adam's Grave, but it is clearly the true site of the
battle. ^3
Or again, the Chronicle in 833 and 840 mentions
fights with the Danes at a place called cet Carrum.
This has commonly been identified with Charmouth in
Dorsetshire,^* but that is phonetically impossible.
In Domesday Cernemude^^ is the form given for
Charmouth, and rightly so, for it stands at the mouth
of the River Cerne. Mr. Bruce Dickins demonstrated
recently that the place is really to be identified with
Carhampton on the Somersetshire coast, whose early
forms suggest that its first element is the very word
carrum, ' at the rocks,' with which Northumbrians are
familiar in Carham-on-Tweed. At Carhampton there
is a wild and rocky valley which might fittingly be thus
described.^^ Place-names may tell us of otherwise unknown
movements from one district or kingdom into another.
The early forms of Conderton in Worcestershire and
Exton in Hampshire are Cantuaretun and East
Seaxnatun,^'' i.e., farm of the men of Kent and of the
men of Essex respectively. These incursions, peaceful
or otherwise, find no other record than in place-names.
Place-names may preserve the last trace of some
powerful people or ancient settlement. The Wych in
Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire is the sole surviving
trace of the ancient Mercian kingdom of the Hwicce,
who settled in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and
part of Oxfordshire.^^ Florence of Worcester's Ytene^^
as the name of the district in which the New Forest
stands is the last trace of the Jutish settlement in South
Hampshire. The Chertsey Cartulary tells us of a

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY n
district called Sunninges,^^ clearly the name of some
powerful family of settlers. The ' provincia ' has been
lost, but it has left its mark in Sonning, Sunninghill
and Sunningwell.
Lost tribes may be recovered. Bede mentions a
district which he calls in Feppingum^^ and says was in
the province of Middle Anglia. This was very
effectively lost until place-name study showed that
there is a place now called Phepson (formerly
F epsetnaturif^ in Himbleton in Worcestershire, not
far over vvhat must have been the southern border of
Middle Anglia. Feppingas means the settlers in or on
Fepp, whatever that was. Fepscete means the settlers at
or from Fepp, and it is clear that the two places are
connected. Probably there was a small settlement
of men from the Fepping district at Phepson.
There are two peoples of allied race to our own,
one in Saxon times and the other in post-Conquest
days, who played an important, part in our history
which has not as yet received its full meed of attention.
I refer to the Frisians and Flemings. According to
one tradition the Frisians actually took part in the
conquest of England and we know that, as the great
seafaring nation of Western Europe, their sailors
helped Alfred against the Vikings. Both Frisians and
Flemings have left a deep mark on our place-names.
Among those due to the former we may mention
Friesthorp and two Friestons in Lincolnshire, Friston
in Lincolnshire and Sussex, two Frisbys in Leicester
shire, more than one Fryston in Yorkshire, Frizington
in Cumberland and Frizinghall near Bradford. To the
latter we may ascribe Fleming Hall in Cumberland
and Flimby in the same county, Flempton in Suffolk,
Fiendish in Cambridgeshire, Flimwell in Sussex. All the
latter contain the name Fleming as their first element.

12 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
Hoary legends may also be destroyed by the same
process of the study of the early forms of place-names.
When we find Dukesfield near Hexham was called
Dukesfeld nearly two hundred years before the battle
of Hexham we can no longer believe that the farm
was so called from the capture there of the Duke of
Somerset after the Battle of Hexham.^^ When
Sandiacre in Nottinghamshire is already called
Sandiriaca^^ [sic] in Domesday, all the clerical authority
in the world which has more than once been hurled at
the head of the student of place-names cannot produce
any conviction that the place is really so called from
St. Jean d'Acre, and Dr. Round has written very
amusingly of such legends as that of the founding of
Colchester by King Cole, whose fate is sealed by the
form Colneceaster in the Saxon Chronicle, ^^ which
shows clearly that Colchester is the Roman fort on the
River Colne and not the city once ruled over by old
King Cole, and of Abbot's Lench in Worcestershire,
which reaUy has no ecclesiastical associations at all
but instead was once held or owned by a man bearing
the somewhat prosaic name of Abba.^^
But, as I said at the outset, these are merely incidental
services which place-name study may render to the
cause of historical truth. Its greatest value lies in the
material which it affords, not for the correction of the
minutiae of historical fact, important as they may be,
or in its power of exploding ill-founded legend, but
on the constructive side. Fortunate as we may be in
comparison with other nations in the wealth of our
early documents, it is still true that for the reconstruc
tion of our past history, more especially of our history
before the Norman Conquest, our documentary
evidence is often miserably inadequate and has for the
most part been worked until it is threadbare. There

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 13
is little or no hope of much that is fresh being got out
of the major documents, and on many points of
interpretation scholars are in hopeless disagreement.
Apart from the documents there are only two sources
of information left open to us. The one is Archaeology
and the other is Place-name Study. We are only just
beginning to appreciate them at their true value, and
the second is as yet an almost unworked mine. When
these two fields have been fully explored we may hope
to have a fresh store of historical facts of the utmost
value, not only in themselves, but also because with
their aid we shall be able to go back once more to our
documents and we shall find in the light of our fuller
knowledge of the facts that many dark places are now
clear, many of the gaps in our documentary evidence
have been made good, and it may even be that some of
the contending historians will then find it possible to
reconcile their differing judgments upon the matters
in hand.
Let us look in a little more detail at the ways in
which this may be brought about. Among the
darkest problems of our history are the stories of
Celtic Britain and of the conquest and settlement
of Celtic Britain by its Teutonic invaders. We know
all too little of the racial divisions of Celtic Britain.
Place-name study can do much in enabling us to
distinguish between the Brythonic and the Goidelic
elements in Britain. A study of our river names is
reveahng to us very clearly the existence of a pre-Celtic
element in our midst, and with its aid we may hope to
establish the racial affinities of these pre-Celtic
inhabitants far more definitely and clearly than has
ever been possible in the past.
On the question of the survival of a Celtic population
in Britain it has been pointed out long since that the

14 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
great majority of the Waltons, Walcotes, Walworths,
Walfords, and the like, scattered up and down England
give evidence of the survival of small groups of
Wealas, i.e., foreigners or Britons, amid their con
querors, but Dr. Ekwall, in his recent epoch-making
book on the Place-names of Lancashire, has shown how
on the evidence of the place-names of that county it is
possible to demonstrate the existence of certain
clearly-marked islands of Celtic population which
must have long survived amid the Anglian settlements,
more especially in certain districts which, by reason of
their physical features, were more or less inaccessible
at that time,"
In an earlier book, Scandinavians and Celts in
North-West Britain, he showed, on the basis of similar
evidence, how we may distinguish in Cumberland,
Westmorland and North Lancashire, Celtic names
of Brythonic origin from names due to the influence of
Scandinavian settlers who had come from Ireland and
the Isles, and were familiar with Gaelic methods of
place-nomenclature. Such curious inversion com
pounds, i.e., compounds vdth inversion of the usual
order of the elements, as we find in Aspatria, i.e., ash
Patrick or Butterilket, i,e,, booths Ulfketill, in place of
the normal ' Patrick's ash ' or ' Ulfketill's booths,' could
only have been given by Scandinavian settlers familiar
with Irish methods of place-nomenclature.^^
Place-name study is showing too how dangerous it
is to assume that because a place bears a name which
looks convincingly English, therefore the place-name,
and ultimately the settlement itself, takes its rise from
Enghsh settlers. What could be more convincingly
Enghsh in origin than the old names Eoforwic for York,
Searoburh for Salisbury, or the Suffolk Dunwich,
going back to the thirteenth century ? One would say

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 15
that they were good Anglo-Saxon names meaning
respectively ' boar-dwelling,' ' fort of trickery,' and
' hill-dweUing,' did we not happen to know that all
these forms are merely folk-perversions of earlier
Celtic names, Eburacum, Sorbiodunum, and Domnoc,
and one cannot but suspect that a great deal of this has
gone on throughout the development of our English
place-names. Unluckily we seldom have the evidence
definitely to prove it.
We come next to the evidence which place-names
may throw upon the racial divisions and spheres of
influence of our Teutonic conquerors, upon the
fashion and manner of the English Conquest of Britain.
Dr. Ekwall has shown recently how a study of them
may help us in distinguishing the parts played by the
Northumbrians and Mercians in the Anglian conquest
of what we now call Lancashire.^® A comparison of
the place-names of Kent with those of Hampshire and
the Isle of Wight might reinforce the archaeological
evidence and give at least'" one more criterion by
which we might judge the extent and character of the
impress made upon these districts by the early Jutish
settlements of which Bede speaks.
On the manner of the settlement we should have a
flood of light if only we had really worked out the
fuU meaning and force of the various suffixes used in
our place-names. We have suffixes ton, worth, wich
and wick and ham, all commonly rendered more or
less vaguely and unsatisfactorily as ' enclosure, dwelling,
farm, homestead.' We are now beginning to discover
that each of them probably once had a distinctive and
well-defined meaning. Dr. G. B. Grundy, working
on the evidence of Saxon Charters for Wiltshire, shows
that the suffix worth occurs seventy-five times, in
seventy-three of which it has an attribute prefixed.

i6 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
Of these eight are descriptive, eleven are uncertain,
and no less than fifty-four are personal. On the
other hand, there are forty-six wicks, forty-three of
which are accompanied by an attribute. Thirty-seven
are descriptive, four are uncertain, and two are personal.
He rightly suggests that this contrast points to the fact
that the worth was some kind of personal possession
while the wick denoted something which belonged
to the community generally, and goes on to show
that the descriptive elements used with wick make it
clear that in many cases we should be justified in
rendering it as ' dairy-farm.'^^ Or, to take another
case from these districts, more than one scholar has
recently suggested to me, quite independently, that the
frequency with which place-names containing wic as
their first element are associated with Roman remains
suggests that in these cases at least wic should be
connected with the Latin vicus. Wickham Bushes in
Berkshire and in Hertfordshire, Weekley in Northamp
tonshire, and many other Wickhams are either adjacent
to or on the line of a Roman road.
Another suffix of interest is stow. This is usually
rendered ' place,' and we are not thereby committed to
very much. Recently I examined all the names in
stow for which I had early forms. There were some
forty in all. In seventy-five per cent, of them the
name was compounded with a saint's name or used in
close association with it, or else was compounded with
such a word as ' Christian,' ' God,' or ' holy.' In
illustration of the first class I may mention Hibbaldstow
in Lincolnshire from St. Hygebeald, Instow in Devon
shire from St. John, and Stow-on-the-Wold in
Gloucestershire which was once Stow St. Edward.
For the second class we may note Christow in Devon,
Godstow in Oxfordshire and Halstow in Devon.^^

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 17
It is clear, therefore, that the chief use of stow in
Early English place-names was, like that of the Welsh
llan, to denote land dedicated to the service of some
saint or of the church generally, Bridstow in Hereford
shire affords interesting confirmation of this. In the
Book of Llandaff it is called Lann San Bregit.^^
Instow Church is dedicated to St. John Baptist,
Stow-on-the-Wold to St, Edward the Confessor, and
Scawby, the next parish to Hibbaldstow, to St.
Hygebeald. But not only have we to discover the meaning of
the various suffixes in use, we have also to examine
their distribution. Surely it is of the utmost import
ance in studying the question of the English settlement
of Britain to note and endeavour to explain such
facts as the following, based upon an analysis of the
distribution throughout England of all those suffixes
which can in any way be associated with the manner
of the settlement, as distinct from those which are of
a purely descriptive and topographical character.
(For convenience' sake I present them in the form of
percentages of the whole number of such names
examined.) For the suffix ham the distribution figures are as
follows : — Norfolk 26 per cent., Suffolk 22, Essex 15,
Cambridge 22, Surrey 25, Sussex 21. As we go
westward there is a regular and well-marked fall, and the
figures for the Western border counties are : —
Cheshire 5 per cent,, Staffordshire i, Shropshire i,
Herefordshire 3, Worcestershire 5, Gloucestershire, 2,
On taking the same group of counties and examining
the distribution of the suffix ton we get the following
results : — Norfolk 33 per cent,, Suffolk 22, Cambridge
shire, 40, Essex 17, Surrey 18, Sussex 31, in contrast
to Cheshire 51 per cent., Staffordshire 48, Shrop-

1 8 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
shire 58, Herefordshire 66, Worcestershire 45, and
Gloucestershire 48,
At this stage of our studies we are hardly in a position
adequately to account for these striking differences or
for others which might be similarly demonstrated.
We are only at the beginning of our investigations,
but no one can doubt the intense significance from the
historical point of view of these and many other like
phenomena with which I might deal if time permitted.
Another point of great interest is to try to discover,
so far as may be, the relative age of the various suffixes
in use in our place-names and thereby make some
progress towards settling another important historical
question, viz., the time at which various names and
types of names first made their appearance on the map.
We are too much inclined to look upon them all as more
or less of the same age. The truth is, as Maitland
pointed out long since, that the map of England was
not written out, as it were, in one hand or at one time.
It is ' the most wonderful of all palimpsests,'^* and if
we are to interpret it aright we must distinguish the
age and activities of the various scribes who have
had a hand in it.
For the solution of the first problem we may well
endeavour to discover what suffixes were in living use
at particular periods of our history. For the Anglo-
Saxon period we have the incomparable wealth of
material to be found in the Saxon charters from the
seventh century onwards. From them we can gather
very full information as to the types of place-name in
use at that time in Southern, South-Eastern and
South- Western England, We shall be safe in assuming
that types other than these, found on the present-day
map, are not of Anglo-Saxon origin. For the time of
the Norman Conquest we have the all-important

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY i^
Domesday Book, It is a well-known fact that there
are a good many place-names in Domesday which
evidently contain as their first element the personal
name of the tenant TRE or TRW recorded in the
same entry. Thus Blackmanstone in Kent was held
TRE by one Blacman.^^ From such a name as this
it is clear that the suffix tun was a living one in the
days of the Conquest ; and if we examine the
evidence of Domesday as a whole, we find, so far
at least as my investigations have carried me, that
the only suffixes denoting human habitation or settle
ment still in living use at the time of the compilation
of the Domesday record were ton, cote, ley, worthy
and field. I know of no case of ham or worth, and this
is significant of their age.
Coming still further down we find plenty of evidence
for the active survival of ton as a place-name suffix in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in such
names as Marlston in Berkshire, earlier Marteleston,
held in 1264 by Richard MarteP® or Forston in
Dorsetshire, earher Forsardeston, held in 1285 by
WiUiam Forsard.^' Similarly the active survival in
post-Conquest times of the suffix by is witnessed by such
names as Aghonby in Cumberland, involving the
Anglo-Norman name Agyllun^^ and by two interesting
cases recently pointed out to me by Colonel Parker,
President of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society,
Halnaby in Yorkshire seems to have taken its name
from one Halnath living there in 12 18, and Jolby in the
same county from one Joel living at about the same
time,^^ Such names as these last show clearly that we
are not justified in assuming that wherever we have
the suffix by we have an actual Scandinavian settlement.
We are only at the beginning of the examination of
evidence of this land, and unfortunately its collection is

20 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
by no means an easy task, for the particular detail
which illuminates the whole matter is only too often
likely to remain unobserved even by the most careful
reader of the document in which it is found. Its
significance is by no means always apparent at first
glance. With one other great field of historical investigation
in which place-names evidence plays an important part
you are doubtless in some measure familiar, I refer
to the way in which place-names may be used in
determining the extent and character of the Viking
settlements in various parts of England, Critically
used they may be of the utmost value. They may,
as Dr. EkwaU has recently shown in his Lancashire book,
enable us to distinguish the part played by Danish
and Norse invaders in these settlements ;*" they may,
as I tried to show in a lecture before this Society some
two years ago, enable us to trace very distinct evidence
of small Scandinavian settlements in Northumberland,
where all the rougher and readier tests for such fail us
entirely.*^ Since that time a yet more interesting
case has come under my notice.
Eastern and North-Eastern England were, we know,
settled by Danes rather than Norsemen ; but in the
tenth century, Norsemen from Ireland and the
Isles were very busy in Yorkshire and the Danelaw
generally.'*^ They have left their mark in the
decoration used in the carved stones of certain districts
of Yorkshire as distinct from those which show the
more common Jellinge or Anglo-Danish type of
ornamentation.*^ The presence of these Norse settlers
is confirmed by three pieces of place-name evidence.
First, the term Northman was in Old English used
of a Norseman, as distinct from a Dane, Now there
are many Normanbys and Normantons in the Danelaw,

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 21
but there are none in Cumberland, Westmorland, or
Lancashire, The apparent anomaly really proves the
truth of the story of the Norse settlements in the
East, Norse settlers in a Danish area would be
distinctively so called by their Anglo-Danish neighbours.
In a purely Norse area Normanton and Normanby
would have no meaning. Every place might have
been so called.
Second, there is a puzzling group of names in
Yorkshire — Arras, Arram, Eryholme, Argam, Airy
Holme** — all derived from the Norse erg, ' a shealing,'
' a pasture-farm.' The word is a Norse borrowing
from Irish and unknown in Denmark. It could only
have come in through Norse Vikings from Ireland or
the Isles.
Third, the Irbys and Irebys and Irton in Yorkshire
and Lincolnshire are Irish bys and tons, so distinguished
because settled by Vikings nicknamed the ' Irishmen '
from the fact that they had come from the Norse
settlements in Ireland,
Enough has been said, I hope, to show how important
is the part which place-name study may play in the
reconstruction of the past. Before I conclude I should
like to say something also of its great value, its largely
unsuspected value, as an aid not only in reconstructing
but also in illustrating our past history. Again and
again in our history lessons or lectures, whether they
deal with political or social history, we might bring to
bear effective evidence from place-names in concrete
illustration of the points under discussion.
Let me take a few illustrations.
When we are speaking of the well-known distinction
between bocland and folcland in Anglo-Saxon times,
between land granted to some individual or corporation
by boc or charter, and folcland which was not so

22 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
distributed, would not the matter best be brought
home, at least in a large number of the counties of
England, by pointing out that all the Bucklands
scattered up and down the country are nothing but
cases of bocland and that, as is only nztViVal, folcland as
a place-name is much more rare, indeed, I only know
of one case, that of Faulkland in Somersetshire ?*^ The
way in which, with the one exception of Buckland in
Lincolnshire, the Bucklands are confined to the
South of England gives cause for reflection as to whether
the system of grant by boc or charter ever really
prevailed to any great extent outside that area.
Or we may be speaking of the assessment of all
estates at so many hides and mentioning how common
was the grouping of these hides in blocks of five and
ten units or multiples of these. We could, in illustra
tion of this, point not only to the familiar Hyde as a
place-name, which you wiU find aU over the South and
Midlands, but still better, one could point to a Fivehead
in Somersetshire, three Fifeheads in Dorsetshire,
Fyfield in Gloucestershire, two Fyfields in Berkshire
and one in Hampshire and one in Essex, two Fifields
in Oxfordshire and two in Wiltshire, each representing
an earlier ' Five-hide.' Of these some ten are
mentioned in Domesday and seven are actually assessed
at five hides.*® One of the Berkshire Fyfields is
assessed at twenty hides — a remarkable increase, while
the Somerset Fivehead is assessed at only one-and-a-half
hides. The ten-hide unit is illustrated in Tinhead in
Wiltshire, for earlier ' ten-hide ' and the same is still
more effectively disguised in Combe-in-Teignhead in
Devonshire. Unluckily, neither of these is mentioned
in Domesday, but we have a good example of a higher
multiple in Piddle Trenthide, also known as Piddle
thretty or thirty Hide in the Middle Ages, This is

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 23
duly assessed at that amount in Domesday.*'' The
present-day forms show how completely the origin of
many of these names has been forgotten.
We are all familiar with the old division of the shires
into hundreds or, in the Scandinavian districts, into
wapentakes, each with their moots, things, or assemblies,
but what a flood of fresh light is thrown on their
character by a study of the names of the meeting-places
from which they took their names. The meetings
seldom or never took place in any well-known centre of
population, in village, town or city. Rather they were
held in some wild and open country spot, chosen either
because it was generally accessible to all who had
a right to attend or else because of the presence of
some ancient barrow, some cross or stone, some sacred
object hallowed by time or superstition. So remote
and unimportant were these centres of assembly that
it is often very difficult nowadays to identify their
actual sites. Let us look at some of their names a little
more closely.
We are aU familiar with Glasgerion's ' full great
oath by oak and ash and thorn,' the sacred trees of the
North, and we are not surprised to find that many
hundreds take their names from thorn-bushes, ash-
trees and oaks. One of the thorn bushes is called,
significantly enough, Spelthorne, i,e., the thorn of
spell or speech. We have examples also of hundreds
taking their names from the box, the alder, a clump
of willows and a thicket.*^ Some sixteen others,
additional to these, include the element ' tree ' in their
name. There are two ' long or tall trees,' an ' apple-
tree,' a ' grey tree,' beside many others named after
their owners. One of the Wiltshire hundreds met
at an alder-stump ; in Northamptonshire we have
a meeting in a grove with a new building, perhaps

24 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
a hall of assembly in it ; and in the Danelaw we have
three wapentakes whose names now end in land,
which are really formed from the O.N. lundr, a grove,
a word which may well have still had the same heathen
associations which it had in Scandinavia.*^
Hills natural or artificial, we are not surprised to find,
often formed the meeting-place. Such are PirehiU
or ' peartree-hill ' in Staffordshire, Smithdown or
' smooth down '^^ in Norfolk, Radcliffe or ' redchff '
in Somersetshire and Staincliffe or ' rocky cliff ' in
Yorkshire. The two commonest suffixes denoting
meeting-places of this type are law or low from
O.E. hlaw, and barrow or borough from O.E. beorg.
Either of these O.E. words may be used equally well
of a hiU or artificial mound, whether barrow or
mote-hill. Among them we find two ' rough '
barrows, a ' long ' barrow, two ' swains ' or peasants'
barrows, a ' knights ' or freemen's barrow, and many
others named from their owners, or yet more probably
from the hero or chieftain whose burial place they had
once formed.^^ Closely allied to these we have,
especially in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and
Suffolk, hundreds whose name ends in O.N. haugr, the
Scandinavian equivalent of the terms just discussed.
Among them we may note especially the Norfolk
Thingoe, ' howe of the thing or assembly ' and Gallow,
earlier Galghou, where the howe seems to have been
crowned by a gallows. In Dorsetshire we find
the corresponding British word in the Hundred of
Creech.52. Ancient camps or fortifications as places of assembly
are marked more than once by the presence of the
suffix bury, the best example being perhaps Badbury
Hundred in Dorsetshire which met at Badbury Rings,
the site of an ancient camp. Of assembhes at stones

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 25
we may note a Whitestone in Somersetshire and
a Whitstone in Gloucestershire, Greatstones in
Gloucestershire and Staine in Cambridgeshire. These
are but a few among many. At times the place of
assembly was marked by some staple, post or pillar as in
the hundreds of Staple in Sussex and Wiltshire and of
Thurstable, earlier Turestaple, in Essex.^^ In such
names as Swineshead in Gloucestershire and Manshead
in Bedfordshire we may have, as Dr. Bradley has
suggested, yet more interesting reference to some
banner or other symbol bearing the figure of an animal
or, man used as the sign of assembly for that particular
hundred. In Christian times it was often marked
by a cross, as in Brothercross and Giltcross in
Norfolk, and Staincross and possibly Buckrose^* in
Yorkshire. Convenience as a meeting-place probably accounts
for the large number of hundredal names in which
we have mention of a ford or bridge. The former are
specially common in East Anglia, the latter are found
in all parts of England.
Mention of the numerous unofficial shires like
Hexhamshire and several other shires in your own
Northumberland, or of Hallamshire and Richmondshire
in Yorkshire, which have survived into modern times,
would serve to illustrate another great feature of
mediaeval life, viz., the existence of ' liberties ' where
the king's writ did not run, where some great noble or
powerful corporation held practically independent sway.
Of slightly different significance is the curious
harness found in Berkeley Harness in Gloucestershire —
about whose origin there has been much idle speculation
— in Lugharness in Herefordshire and Bromfield
Harness in Shropshire. All alike go back to the
O.E. hierness, ' hearing,' and mark districts which

26 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
' heard,' ' obeyed,' or ' belonged ' to the manors or
estates from which they took their names,^^
Two interesting questions of ownership are happily
illustrated by place-names. There has been a good
deal of discussion about the question of the ownership
of land by women in early times. There is abundance
of pre-Conquest evidence from place-names for the
existence of this, and from all parts of England, We may
note as examples Afflington in Dorset, Bucklebury in
Berkshire, Balterley in Staffordshire, Wilderley in
Shropshire, Hilborough in Norfolk, Worldham in
Hampshire in Saxon England, The early forms of
these names show that they contain the female names
of Aelfrun, Burghild, Bealdthryth, Wilthryth,
Hildeburh, Wserhild."*" Similarly in the Danelaw we
have Raventhorpe in Lincolnshire, Gunthorpe in
Nottinghamshire, Helperthorpe and Hilderthorpe in
Yorkshire contain the Scandinavian women's names
Ragnhildr, Gunnhildr, Hialp and Hildr."
Investigation into the history of the Saxon church
shows that often the church was regarded as a profit-
yielding appurtenance to an estate and that one has in
many cases to speak of an ' owned ' church. In the
twelfth century the ' owner ' of a church could grant
it to a clerk in formulae which would be appropriate,
e.g., for the grant of a mill. The owner would stipulate
for a yearly rent and the tenant would pledge his faith
to pay it.^^ This is illustrated by the way in which
a place-name in church often has the owner's name
prefixed to it. Alvechurch in Worcestershire is
'Aelfgyth's church,' Buckminster in Leicestershire is
' Bucca's minster,' Offchurch in Warwickshire is
' Offa's church,' while Pitminster involves the
patronymic Pipping. In Layston in Hertfordshire,
which was originally ' Leofstan's church,' the ' church '

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 27
has been dropped and we are left simply with the
owner's name.^® It is worth noting that in the first
case we have a church owned by a woman.
Or, to turn to a somewhat different field of historical
study, viz., the part played by freemen in the Early
English social system. What abundance of evidence
would be furnished in illustration of this by a study
of our place-names ! The numerous Knightons,
Knightleys and the hke scattered up and down England
all contain as their first element the O.E, cniht,
' young man,' ' freeman,' in its genitive plural form.
In three cases we can actually trace the freemen in
Domesday. Knighton in Berkshire was held by
5 liberi homines, in Dorsetshire by 2 taini and in
Hampshire by 8 liberi homines. It is noteworthy that
all these are TRE. By the time of William they were
held by individual tenants.®"
The word cild, our ' child,' the ' Childe ' of ' Childe
Rowland to the dark tower came ' and other ballads,
possibly represented a higher social status than the
cniht. It is found in many of the Chiltons and
Chilcotes which are fairly common in the South and
Midlands and in Child Hanley and Childerley. In one
case only have the ' children ' been traced in Domes
day, viz., in Childerley, which was held TRE by
4 sochemanni.^^ Lower down in the social scale stood the swan or
peasant, who has left us many names like Swanton in
Norfolk, i.e., ' farm of the peasants,' two Swantons
in Kent, Swanbourne in Buckinghamshire, Swanage in
Dorsetshire, Swampton, Swanmore, Swanthorpe and
Swanwick in Hampshire, and Swanborne in Sussex.
In none of these cases have we in Domesday anything
other than a single tenant, and this makes it look as if we
should look upon the ' swains ' as persons dweUing at

28 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
these places but not as holding or owning land. Yet
more familiar are the Charltons which we find from
Northumberland to the Isle of Wight, all from
O.E. ceorla tun, ' farm of the ceorls or freemen.' One
would like to trace their holders in Domesday, but the
task is a big one. My impression is that there are
not many cases like that of Charlton in Northampton
shire where we duly find TRE 4 taini liberi'^^ in
possession. All these names alike, with the possible
exception of those in swan, represent, I believe,
settlements formed originally by some group of
freemen as distinct from those which were in the
hands of some great eorl and his retainers. That so
few are in the possession of freemen in Domesday is
a measure of the decline of freedom since the days of
the Saxon Conquest.*'
In similar fashion we might illustrate the
Scandinavian social system and more especially its
qualities of freedom, equality, and independence by
reference to many names used in the Danelaw. One
would, in the first place, point to the numerous
Carltons in these counties, sown a good deal more
thickly than the equivalent English Charltons. But
there are also other types of name of interest in this
connexion. Bonby in Lincolnshire and Burstwick in
the East Riding, earlier Bondebrustwyk,^^ both contain
the O.N. bondi, ' a peasant farmer,' apparently in the
genitive plural form. Now Bonby was held TRE by
Grinketill, Halfdanr, and four other taini,^^ while we
hear as late as 1297 that the ' bonde ' of Burstwick held
of the king certain lands in that town,®® In Drointon
in Staffordshire, Drinkstone in Suffolk, Dringhouses
and Dringhoe in Yorkshire, we have illustrations of yet
another social class, the dreng or warrior class, and
these would serve to give colour to discussions of the

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 29
system of drengage tenure so widely prevalent in the
Middle Ages in your own Palatinate and elsewhere in
the North of England. Of the Scandinavian
' freedmen ' as distinct from the ' freemen ' we have
illustrations in two Lazenbys in Yorkshire and Lazonby
in Cumberland, both alike containing O.Dan, leisingr,
' a freedman ' and denoting ' farm or village of the
freedmen.'®' While speaking of Scandinavian England I may
remind you of the two Thingwalls, one in Lancashire
and the other in Cheshire, which were in all probability
actual thingvellir or ' plains of assembly,' in the full
sense of the term, for meetings of the Scandinavian
settlers in those districts, or your own Dingbell Hill in
Whitfield, whose use as such is not so certain, and of
Brampton and Ecclesall Bierlows in Yorkshire, small
bys districts governed by their respective Jy-laws (0,N,
byjar-log), which may serve in illustration of the great
interest and skill shown by the Vikings in all legal
matters. Whether from Lemon's Hill in Lancashire,®^
earlier ' lawman's hiU,' some Scandinavian lawman
actually proclaimed the law to the district or whether
it is so called simply from its owner who, like the poet
Layamon, was christened or nicknamed ' Lawman,'
one cannot be certain.
But it is not only on the pohtical and social aspects
of mediaeval history that a study of place-names
furnishes useful illustrations and suggestions. They
help to reproduce for us the life of the countryside in
all its varied aspects. At one time it was a favourite
exercise of the student of folk-lore and early religion
to find Balders and Thors wherever one found place-
names beginning with these elements. The Balders
probably all go back simply to the Old Enghsh personal
name Bealdhere, while Thor or Thur was a common

30 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
personal name and element in compound personal
names in Scandinavia, The only clear cases of the use
of the name of some heathen god of which I am aware
are those which contain the name of the great god
Woden, His name is to be found in the Wodenesbeorg
referred to above, in Woodnesborough in Kent, in
Wednesbury in Staffordshire, in all of which his name is
associated with a barrow or hiU, in Wednesfield in
Staffordshire and in Wensley in Derbyshire, Wansdyke
an ancient earthwork stretching from a point east of
Savernake for some sixty miles, nearly as far as the
Bristol Channel, is really Woden's Dyke, and, like many
other such pre-historic relics, was conceived to be of
divine or else of demonic origin,®^ Of the Scandinavian
pantheon the only certain trace of which I am aware
is in Roseberry Topping, a well-knowm hiU in the
North Riding, whose earlier name was Outhenesberg,
' hill of Othin,' the Scandinavian counterpart of the
hills of Woden just mentioned,''"
Mention has been made of names in lund, indicating
perhaps a sacred grove. Of similar type we have
Harrow in Middlesex, meaning the heathen sanctuary
(O.E. hearg) and Harrowden in Northamptonshire,
which seems to be ' sanctuary hill.''^
Of other heathen behefs we have that in dwarfs,
suggested by Dwerry-house in Lancashire and
Dwarraden in Yorkshire, ' dwarf-ridden house and
valley ' respectively ; in giants, as in Thrushgill and
Thursden in Lancashire, ' gill and valley of the
giant ' (O.N. Jiyrs) ; in spectres, ghosts and the
like, in two Grimshaws in Lancashire (O.E. grima,
spectre), ' woods of the spectre. '''^ In Pucklechurch in
Gloucestershire it looks as if the old pucel or goblin
of heathen belief had continued to hold his own even
in the precincts of the church. Shugborough in

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 31
Staffordshire and Shuckborough in Warwickshire'^ and
Shecklow in Buckinghamshire are all of them barrows
haunted by the ghosts of the warriors buried there,
the first element being 0,E, scucca, ' a demon,'''*
Drakelow in Derbyshire, ' dragon's barrow,' reminds
us of the firm belief in dragons in those days, a belief
so firm that a Northern chronicler tells us in all
seriousness that in the year 793 fiery dragons were seen
flying in Northumbria, while the Old English Gnomic
Verses of proverbial wisdom tell us in one and the same
breath that the dragon must ever haunt the barrow and
the fish bring forth their young in the sea.'^
Christianity was unluckily only too successful in
driving out most of these ancient beliefs and super
stitions, at least publicly and officially, but it has itself
left its own mark on the place-names of the countryside.
Village crosses were once as common in England as
they are once again becoming, as memorials of the
Great War. Place-names remind us of this.
Kismeldon Bridge in Devon and Christian Malford in
Wiltshire are respectively the ' hill and ford marked
by the cristmeel,' i.e., the Christ sign or cross. Crutch
in Worcestershire and Crouch End in Middlesex show
the equivalent French term, while Maiden in Surrey,
Maldon in Essex, and Maulden in Bedfordshire,
probably aU have as their first element a shortened
form of cristmcel."^^
Many places take their name from their church,
though curiously enough the word church has in place-
names got hopelessly entangled with the heathen
British crich, a barrow or moot-hill, and some names
in church, as, for example, the Churchills of South
and South-west England, are really ' crich-hills,'
and at least one kirk in Northumberland is an example
of the same metathesis, Kirkley in Ponteland is

32 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
really Crikklelawe, and any one who cares may to this
day see the mote-hill from which it takes its name.
Places in eccles, simple and compounded, remind us of
Celtic Christianity, for many of them contain the
British form of the Latin ecclesia, preserved to this
day in Cornwall and Wales as eglos (e.g,, Egloshayle)
and eglwys (e.g., Eglwysfach) respectively.
Some names throw light on the appearance and
architecture of the churches of those days. The
Whitechapels and Whitchurches are of significantly
frequent occurrence. These and Ivychurch are self-
explanatory, but others call for a word of comment,
Bradkirk in Lancashire, earlier Bredekirk, is so called
from the bredes or planks (0,E, bred) from which it was
built, perhaps half-oak timbers like those found to this
day at Greenstead in Essex, In Frome Vauchurch
in Dorsetshire and Vowchurch in Herefordshire we
have the equivalent of the Scottish Falkirk, the Gaelic
Egglesbrec, the speckled or variegated church. Does
this describe a half-timbered black and white church
such as is still fairly common in Cheshire ?''*
Hornchurch would seem to suggest a church whose
gables were, like those of Heorot in Beowulf, adorned
with horns or perhaps rather one whose architectural
ornaments suggested a resemblance to some horned
animal. Wells and springs were often credited with miraculous
healing powers and became objects of popular reverence.
Very numerous are the HoUiwells, Halliwells, HolyweUs
and Halwills which testify to this, while in the Danelaw
we meet with the Scandinavian equivalent Hallikeld.
It is a little more difficult to know why the epithet
' holy ' is applied to a tree in Somersetshire Hallatrow,
to a ford in the Middlesex Halliford,''^ Another tree
with sacred associations would seem to be found in

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 33
Cressage in Shropshire, whose early forms suggest its
interpretation as ' Christ's Oak.''® One is not surprised
to find that this last has been associated with the
scene of St. Augustine's miracle against the Druids,
In the study, too, of mediaeval means of communica
tion, place-names are peculiarly happy in the
illustrations which they provide. No surer reminder
of the importance of the Roman and Romanised
system of roads could be found than the many forms
in which the Latin (via) strata has, through its Old
English loan form strat, worked itself into our place-
names as in aU the Strettons and Strattons, the
Stratfords and Stretfords, the Stratfields and
Streatfields, the Streatleys and Streetleys, the Sturtons
and the like. It is significant also haw much more
frequent is ford as a place-name suffix than bridge, and
how often names of fords are preceded by a personal
name, that doubtless of the man who owned them and
took toll for their use. We have mention of a few
stone bridges, but much more common are references to
wooden ones, such as Woodbridge in Suffolk, Elmbridge
in Huntingdonshire and Gloucestershire and Surrey,
Stockbridge in Sussex and Hampshire, or, most
frequent of all, to mere plank bridges, Thel (M,E. thele)
is the 0,E, word for a plank and is found in Thele in
Hertfordshire and Berkshire, Thelbridge in Devonshire
and Elbridge in Kent and Sussex, where we have
a curious misdivision of the word whereby Thelbridge
is taken to be TFelbridge and then the supposed
definite article is dropped," At the other extreme
from the Roman roads we have the numerous places
in England called Anstey or Ansty, I have noted
at least half-a-dozen, Anst(e)y is the 0,E. anstig,
a ' sty ' or ' path for one,' and its general character
can perhaps best be inferred from the fact that

34 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY
Beowulf's tracking of Grendel's mother took place along
such anpabas across the swamps and fens. That-
travelling was no easy matter is illustrated in neat
fashion by the Hertfordshire Flamstead. This is the
O.E, jleamstede, ' place of refuge.' The manor of
Flamstead was held in later days by the duty of
providing protection for travellers'^ and it is possible
that its Old English name gives us evidence that the
obhgation was a much older one.
And so one might go on, but I hope that the latter
part of my paper has proved in sufficient measure the
wealth of historical suggestion and illustration to be
found in place-names, just as I would fain trust that
in the first part I showed the value of these names as
an auxiliary in the forces of historical research.
Throughout the paper you will have noticed,
that again and again my statements are tentative
and suggestive rather than dogmatic or assertive.
That is not due, I am convinced, to any weakness
of the case for place-name study, rather it is
due to the fact that we are only at the beginning of
organised place-name study in this country. It has
been my privilege, along with others, during these
last few years to make a number of rapid excursions
into these new countries and we are as spies bringing
back report of a goodly country. We have gathered
a few of the rich fruits, but we are deeply conscious
that they can only be fully garnered when a whole
army of workers well-equipped and well-organised,
has gone up and taken full possession of the land.
It is this consciousness which has prompted a small
band of scholars working under the patronage of the
British Academy to start a Survey of the Place-names of
England. It will try to do for this country what has
been done and is being done for the place-names of the

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 35
three Scandinavian kingdoms, viz., endeavour to
secure not only that those names should individually
be interpreted by scholars who will pay heed to all
those considerations philological, historical and topo
graphical, which must contribute to their solution
but will also draw from them all those larger conclusions,
historical and cultural, which are implicit in them.
The task is no easy one. It calls for great expendi
ture of energy and no little expenditure of money, it
wiU take many years to complete, and demand the
unstinted devotion of many scholars, but one would
fain hope that in this, as in all else, the poets are the
true seers, and that the sensitiveness of our modern
poets to the haunting beauty of sound and association
of our Enghsh place-names is prophetic of a real
awakening of interest in this many-sided theme.

36

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY

REFERENCES
Abbreviations : — ASC (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) ; BCS (Birch,
Cartularium Saxonicum) ; BM (Index to Charters, etc. in British
Museum), Ch (Charter Rolls) ; DB Pomesday Book) ; FA (Feudal
Aids) ; Ipm (Inquisitions post mortem) ; Pat (Patent Rolls) ; PN
(Place-names).

I. Opera Historica, ed.
Plummer, i. 232
2. ib.,\. 183
3. ib., i. 170
4. ed. Stevenson, p. 230
5. Historians of the Church of
Tork, i. 432
6. Hist. Dunelm. Scriptores
Tres, cccxxxiv
7. The Saxons in England
(1876 ed.), i. 59
8. ' Settlement of the South
and East Saxons,' in Commune of
London, pp. 1-27
9. s.a. 592 and 715
10. Two Saxon Chronicles, ed.
Erie and Plummer, ii. 71
II. BCS 478
12. ib. 390
13. See Grundy on the
' Saxon battlefields of Wiltshire,'
in Arch. Joum., 2nd ser., xxv.
175-194 14. Two Saxon Chronicles u.s.,
ii. 74
15. Fol 80a
16. Times Literary Supple
ment, Sept; 22, 1921. The rather
surprising addition of tun to the
dative plural has its parallel in
Badumtun (ASC 906D)

17. BCS S41 and 758
18. Alexander, PN of Oxford
shire, s.n., Asser (ed. Stevenson),
p. 228
19. ed. Thorp, ii. 45
20. BCS 34
21. U.S., i. 171
22. BCS 927
23. Mawer, PN of Nthb. and
Durham, s.n.
24. Fol 291b
25. s.a. 921
26. Notes on the Systematic
Study of PN (Address to Congress
of Archaeological Societies, 1900),
p. 2
27. PN of Lancashire, pp. 224-
237 28. op. cit., pp. 17, 21
29. op. cit., pp. 227-233
30. Leeds, The Archaeology
of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements,
pp. 116-119; Baldwin Brown,
The Arts in Early England, iv.
744fr. 31. Wiltshire Mag., Dec.
1921, p. 344
32. DB Hibaldestoue, Johan-
nestou, FA 1 3 1 6 Stowe S.
Edwardi, ib. 1284 Christene-
stowe, 1 316 Godestowe, DB
Halestou

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY

37

33. BAnmstetjPN of Hereford
shire s.n.
34. Maitland, Collected Papers
ii. 87
35. Fol. 13a
36. Ipm
37. FA
38. Sedgefield, PN of
Cumberland s.n.
39. Information from his
forthcoming ed. of Feet of Fines
for Hy. 3 for the YAS
40. op. cit., pp. 245-8
41. cf. Arch. Aeliana, 3rd
ser., iviii. 1-18
42. ASC passim
43. Professor Collingwood at
the British Association, Hull,
1922 44. FA 1 3 16 Erghes, DB
Argum, Argun, Ergome, Ergun
45. FA 1 316 Folclond
46. See Eyton, Domesday
Studies 121, 131, 135 for Dorset ;
BM for Glouc. ; Stenton, PN of
Berkshire, p. 21 ; BCS 1314 for
Hants.; FA 1316 for Oxon.
and DB 94a, 31b, 157b, 65b, 70b
for the others.
47. FA 1 3 16 Tenhyde, Ch
1227 Cumbe in Tenhide, Eyton
U.S., p. 137
48. Foxearle, Sx. (DB Foxer,
Folsalre); Willey, Beds. (DB
Wilga); Easvn-ith, Sx. (DB
Isiwride) 49. Langtree, Glos. and
Oxon. ; Appletree, Derbys. ; Grey-
tree, Heref. ; Elstub, Wilts. ;
Nobottle Grove, Northants.
(DB Neubotlagrave), Aveland and
Framland, Lines, and Wayland,
Norf.

50. DB Smetheduna
51. Roborough, Berks, and
Ruloe, Cheshire (DB Roelau),
Langbaurgh, Yorks., Swan-
borough, Sx. and Wilts., Knight-
low, Warw.
52. Earlier Criche
S3- DB7b
54. Pat 1271 Bucros, Ipm
Ed. i Bukrosse
55. ASC s.a. 1087 Beorclea
hymesse 56. DB Alfrunetone, FA 31 16
Burghildebury, Earle, Landed
Charters p. 219 Baltry dele age,
DB Wildredelege, Hildeburhwelle
(sic), Werildeham
57. DB Rageniltorp, Elpetorp,
Hilgertorp (sic) and Gunildethorp,
quoted by Mutschmann, PN of
Nottinghamshire s.n.
58. Staxton, Danelaw Charters
pp. Hi and Ixxvii and Gilbertine
Charters, pp. xxiii and xxiv,
Boehmer Die Eigenkirchtum
(Liebermann Festgabe)
59. Wore. Surv. Aelfithe cyrce,
Ch 1257 Offecherche, DB 223b
Bucheminstre, BCS 729 Piping
minstre, FA 1428 Lestancherche
60. Fol. 82a, 39b
61. Fol 2oib, 223b
62. Fol 223b. Even this case
is doubtful for one cannot equate
a ceorl and a free thane, but we
have in any case a composite
holding, the status of whose
holders may have risen since the
place was first named.
63. See further Stenton, PN
of Berkshire, p. 20
64. Ch 1340
65. Fol 356a

38

PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY

66. Pat
67. DB Leisincbi, Laisenbia,
Leisingebi 68. Ekwall s.n.
69. BM c. 1200 Wodnesberge,
DB Wodnesleie, BCS 1073. For
Wednesbury and Wednesfield,
see Duignan, PN of Stags.
70. Guisborough Chartulary
(Surtees Society) passim.
71. BCS 384 cet hearge, Ch
1332 (Hy 2) Hargheduna
72. Ekwall s.n.
73. Baddeley, PN of Glos. s.n.,
Duignan, PN of Warwickshire
and of Staffs s.n.
74. BCS, 264 scuccan hlau.
This identification is due to

Mr. F. G. Gurney of Edgington,
Leighton Buzzard.
75. Cottonian Verses 11. 26-28
76. FA Kystermeldon, 1318
Ch Kistermelebrigg, DB Chris-
temeleforde, Duignan, PN of
Wore, s.n., Gover, PN of
Middlesex s.n., DB Meldone,
ASC Meldun, Skeat, PN of Beds.,
s.n. 77. FA 1303 Fouchurche, 13 16
Fowechurch 78. DB Helgetreu, Gover u.s.,
s.n. 79. DB Cristesache. For the
last two see BCS 869 ^celbrycg,
50 thelryeg. Page, FCH of Herts.,
ii. 149, 150 and 194.

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