The Bulletin of CSLH
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Landscape History Today: the Bulletin of CSLH January 2015 Number 56 Members enjoying a day of discovery in Nantwich Contents Chair’s Message 3 Labelling Landscapes: Alternative Views from Afar 4 Blanche Mortimer Makes Surprise Appearance! 9 Brogyntyn Revisited ... 14 The Year Ahead ... 16 Nantwich - then and now 24 The editor would like to thank Mike Headon for his help with proof reading the various articles for this issue. Please make sure all contributions for the September edition of the Bulletin are with the editor by 31st July 2015. Editor: Dr Sharon Varey, Meadow Brook, 49 Peel Crescent, Ashton Hayes, Cheshire, CH3 8DA Email: [email protected] Web: www.chesterlandscapehistory.org.uk Page 2 Chair’s Message The autumn season is often a busy one for the Planning Team and this has been no exception as lectures and field visits are finalised for the forthcoming year. September saw the launch of our latest publication Field-names in Cheshire, Shropshire and North-East Wales. Sales were swift at our launch event and it soon became apparent that a second print run would be necessary to meet demand. As I type, these too have virtually sold out! CSLH members are always supportive of Cheshire Local History Day. This year it was good to see that two of our members, Rachel Swallow and Tony Barratt, were invited to speak at the event. It is a healthy sign of a vibrant Society that a number of its members are actively involved in local research projects. Saturday 10th October 2015 will offer the chance for CSLH members to find out about research projects currently being undertaken by members in our area. Eight members have agreed to take part in this event which is being held at St Mary’s Centre in Chester. Following a lecture by the Society’s President, Graeme White, the day will consist of shorter presentations, 20 minutes in length, covering a variety of topics. Flyers outlining individual talks will be available in the Spring. This is surely not a day to be missed, so please make a note of the date in your diary/calendar. Finally, on behalf of the Planning Team, I would like to wish all our members a very happy New Year and hope to see you again soon at one of our Spring lectures. Sharon Varey Page 3 Labelling Landscapes Alternative Views from Afar Lifelong Learning Coordinator Julie is Cheshire-born but Australian-bred, swapping Sale for Sydney to start school at Botany Bay. Moving just down the coast to the city of ‘sound of waves on rocks’ Wollongong it was here she first became entranced with local landscape mysteries and resolved one day to find out. Figure 1 Ancient linguistic landscapes Allawah, Bondi, Canberra… Although these Australian suburbs and cities are likely to sound familiar to many, it is unlikely their actual meanings are known. In Sydney recently I bought a book on Aboriginal place-names. Its alphabetical compilation was a toponymic treat. I had to investigate, not as an ‘ABC’ but a broader ‘look and see’. The more I looked afresh the more landscape history I found. Differences were extraordinary - but then so were the astounding commonalities. Page 4 Boondi is ‘the sound of tumbling waters or of seas rolling in on a beach’. At Bondi now most would recognise this correspondence. But Allawah - ‘stay here, rest, sit down’ smacks of a wandering lifestyle. The nation’s capital, Canberra, is neatly rendered as ‘meeting place’, itself deriving from Nganbirra. Or did it also refer, bizarrely, to a woman’s breasts? The latter option alludes to the two mountains overlooking a plain which then became the site of the new city. The anatomical answer is indeed testified to by a Ngunalwal Elder. Indigenous descriptions of landscape Sources are not numerous. Reliability of some can be questionable. Even so, the bulk of names is clearly topographical. A spot might be differentiated by reference to ‘standard’ visual features: hills, views, rocks, lakes, coastal places, islands. The majority of Aboriginal words, understandably, tend to be water-related. Legendary billabongs are but a separated reach of water. Distinctive too is the practice of doubling words. Bulli, from Bulla, means two mountains. Four peaks are simply… Bulla Bulla. Conversely - and is it any surprise - a glaring gap characterises the ‘habitative’ category. For nomadic peoples with no fixed address, a vocabulary of settlement had no need to develop. Plenty of ‘camp’ names do however occur. Tumut in the snow country was once doomut or doomat, a camping place by the river. Perhaps this was where one could camp. It also demonstrates how sound changes or perhaps just perceptions of a word morph into new, printed ‘map’ versions. Names could also arise from animals - dead or alive - frequent references occur to the wild hunting dog, or dingo; and to particular individuals or one-time events happening there. Windang was the memorable scene of a fight. (To English speakers this might sound quite plausible.) A high frequency of ‘woman’ words is intriguing. The Canberra example is but one. Near Adelaide, Onkaparinga is ‘the women’s river’. Often place-name derivations can be very frank, amusing or even crude. Sydney’s popular beach at Coogee would surely be a turnoff for bathers if its real meaning were known. Koojah/Koocha, the authentic pronunciation, alluded to rotten seaweed and by extension, ‘stinking’. Source languages abound Size-wise the continent of Australia is thirty times as vast as the UK. Upwards of 250 tribal languages and 600 dialects were spoken Page 5 at the time of white settlement. None were written. For my short survey I limited geographical range mostly to eastern New South Wales, especially the Illawarra district south of Sydney where I grew up. Having lived amongst these names, their usage is second nature. In many cases I can corroborate supposed meanings with their physical settings. Bulli really does refer to the twin peaks of Keira and Kembla, of which more later. Illawarra is a pleasant, high place by the sea. Very true… or is it also ‘white clay hill’? However, for primary source material we can go one better. Figure 1 Mount Keira A Chester connection Somewhere in eighteenth-century Chester Fisher and Margaritta Tench ran a dancing academy and boarding school. Their son Watkin, born 1758, joined the Royal Marines. As an officer in 1788 Watkin Tench sailed with the historic First Fleet, and left precious reports of his encounters. It was Tench who made the first recorded use of the word ‘dingo’. Around Botany Bay he noted the ‘rough, guttural pronunciation of the men’. Speech certainly can resemble a rapid, rhythmic patter, an observation which itself may help explain the timbre of indigenous place-names. One young Aboriginal was known to the officers as Baneelon. His loyal behaviour was rewarded with a specially built house on a spit of land at Sydney Cove. Now called Bennelong Point it is the location of the world-famous Opera House. Page 6 Parallels in toponymy Compared with descriptions left by Roman, Anglo- Saxon, Norse, and Norman the ways of distinguishing landscape are remarkably close. Kogarah, urban birthplace of broadcaster Clive James (my brother was born there too) once indicated a reedy swamp. Vocal and literary influences such as mishearing, attempting to render difficult pronunciations, recording, shortening or simplifying are all present. Just as Domesday scribes are reputed to have done, clerks in nineteenth-century Land Offices made their own registration errors. On the other hand, an example very simply evoking lack of permanent settlement is Numby- a sleeping (or sleepy) place. Contrasts are not just an absence of habitation names though. Repetition, as already noted, is virtually iconic. Bong Bong, coming from bung or swamp, in this case suggests very, very swampy! A simple and useful idea, yet one which Europe, medieval or modern, seems never to have adopted. Puzzles and pitfalls too A precise science this cannot be, yet here lies the fascination. Across the globe comparable cultural and linguistic processes arose. Introduced words became mixed in, as with the euphonic Woolloomooloo, a Sydney harbourside suburb. Was it the garbled attempt by Tench’s ‘Indians’ to enunciate the English word ‘windmill’? As evidenced, multiple meanings are often listed, not always bearing any relationship to each other. Which might legitimately be chosen? Maybe the truest interpretations are indeed all of them. Mount Keira, from djeera, indicates ‘high place’, but also, as with Mount Kembla, one where plenty of bush turkey roam. Currently a popular girl’s name, and my cat’s, Keira’s meaning of wildfowl suggests all derivations ought to be checked. Transferable skills An exercise like this gives renewed opportunity to apply the techniques - or at least the curiosity - of a landscape historian. Deeper questions are posed, however, such as the politicisation of landscape. Tenure and land rights are implied by pre-existing names, fairly quickly replaced after ‘invasion’ or colonisation. The topic is acutely sensitive. Overall, teasing out strands of a nomenclature becomes a very alive and human enquiry. Its universality is somehow reassuring. Truly, in continuing to explore, we do not languish in Numby Numby territory! Julie Elizabeth Smalley Page 7 Further Reading A.W. Reed, Aboriginal Place Names (New Holland Australia, 1967) T. Flannery, 1788 The Text (Melbourne, 1996) Websites consulted: http://www.blowering.com/placenames.html http://www.ourlanguages.net.au/languages/aboriginal-place-names.html http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/ illawarraaboriginalhistoryposter.pdf http://www.canberrahistoryweb.com/meaningofcanberra.htm http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/language/ http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/AUS-PT-JACKSON- CONVICTS/2001-11/1006221108 Come along and help make a difference ..