: Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com NOTES ON WILTSHIRE NAMES Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com BY JOHN C. LONGSTAFF. Vol. I.—place-names. BRADFORD-ON-AVON WM. DOTESIO, THE LIBRARY PRESS. 1911. Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com PREFACE 11829S0 These Notes on Wiltshire Names set forth no new discoveries ; they merely bring together in one volume information which hitherto has had to be sought in the works of a dozen different writers. Hence the volume Is little more than a compilation, not written Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com for scholars, who it may be assumed already possess the information contained herein, or know where to obtain such information should they need it. Indeed many of them could have done the work much better than the present writer, had they found time for such a task. This book then has been prepared for the ordinary reader—the man in the street, the youth of studious disposition, the senior school-boy,—who may dpsire to know the origin and meaning of his own name and of the names of his fellows, as well as the history of the town- and village-names that meet his eye as he looks at the map of Wilts. Borrow in his " Wild Wales," tells us that he frequently met those to whom it had never occurred to find out the meaning of the name of the village Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com iv Preface in which they were born and bred. Surely there are few educated people among us to-day, who are so indifferent to these things. Men pride themselves on " calling a spade a spade," but do they pause to enquire why it was called a spade? If the present volume should lead some to enquire into these matters, it will not have been written in vain. In the preparation of this book the following writers have been consulted : — Dr. I. Taylor, Prof. Skeat, Mr. Duignan, John Brittain, Aubrey, Camden, and Dr. H. C. March, as well as editions of the Saxon Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com Charters by Birch, and Thorpe ; Canon Jones' edition of the Wilts Domesday Book ; Searle's Onomasticon Anglo Saxonicum ; Bosworth & Toller's A.S. Diction- ary, together with miscellaneous papers in the Wilts Archaeological Society's Magazine, chiefly by the late Canon Jones and the late Canon Jackson. Much valuable information has been gathered from the " History of Bradford-on-Avon," by Canon Jones, revised and annotated by Dr. Beddoe. The writer has also consulted articles on "Names" in Blackie's and Chambers's EncyolopaBdias. But more than all, he desires to acknowledge the sympathy and generous assistance of an anonymous friend, who has advised on difficult points, and has kindly revised the author's MSS. But for such invaluable assistance, these sheets had never seen the light. They are now issued with much diffidence, in the hope that the Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com Preface v reader, while not perhaps agreeing with all the conclusions arrived at, will find the subject as interesting and instructive as it has proved to the writer. It may be well to add that the meanings set forth herein, are such as appear satisfactory to the author. In some cases alternative meanings are given, but in no case is the presentation of one meaning to be held as excluding all others. Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com VoiiUME II SURNAMES will be published shortly. : Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page Introductohy : —The Keltic, Roman, Saxon, Scandinavian and Danish Elements 1 CHAPTER II. Names dbrived pbom Ekclosdeeb :—Ton ... 17 Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com CHAPTER III. Names dbbived pbom Enclosures {contvmied) —Hams, Burys, Worths and Wicks 55 CHAPTER IV. Names derived prom Open Spaces (Land) : — Leighs, Fields, Woods, Stokes, Combs, Dovrns, Deans, Hills, &c. 77 CHAPTER V. Names derived prom Water : — Fords, Brooks, Wells, Founts and Lakes , Ill CHAPTER VI. Names vabiodsly derived, and not included in the foregoing Chapters 133 Addbmda Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com ABBREVIATIONS. D.B.—Domesday Book. N.V.Thankyou— Nominafor your purchaseVillarum. Click hereSherififs' to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.comreturns made in 1316, stating what hundreds, cities, townships, etc., were in their Bailiwicks. B.A. Roll.—Battle Abbey enshrined the names of those who followed William from Normandy to conquer England. B.C.S.—Birch's Edition of Saxon Charters. T.C.S.—Thorp's Edition of Saxon Charters. K.C.D.—Kemble's Edition of Saxon Charters. L.V.D.—Swete's Liber Vitae Dunelm. Gen.—Genitive Case. Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia ^HThankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com 2 Notes on Wiltshire Names The Wans Dyke and Grims Dyke remind us of the mighty gods of the old pagan days, while Marlborough suggests associations with the Great Enchanter—Merlin, whose name it is said to bear. Then we have numerous British trackways, camps, dykes and barrows, not to mention remains of Eoman roads and villas. At Old Sarum, one of the early seats of English Christianity, William the Conqueror in 1085 gathered together his knights and before a huge concourse of people caused them to swear fealty to him. Clarendon has given us its famous Constitutions which lie at the very foundation of our English jurisprudence, and Malmesbury and Bradford-on-Avon have associations Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com with one of the greatest of early churchmen and teachers—St. Aldhelm. Salisbury Cathedral, a most striking example of English architecture also belongs to a county which justly boasts several fine abbeys and many stately mansions. Nature has divided cur county into two well-defined portions. The north-west is occupied by a lowland division, low lying and fairly level ; while the south- east, for the most part, consists of high table-land of chalk formation. The boundary between these two divisions, follows a line drawn from Bishopstone in the N.E. through Wanborough, Wroughton, Cliff Pypard, Calne, Devizes, and thence on towards Westbury and Maiden Bradley in the S.W. The low-lying division of the county is well wooded, with rich meadows and pastures, while the south-eastern portion is generally dry and bare of trees, with soft springy turf on which large flocks of sheep are reared. In the vales of Pew- sey, Warminster and Wardour the chalk has been worn Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com Notes on Wiltshire Names 3 away and the " Upper Greensand " and the Gault have been brought to the surface. The rocks in the north- west are OoHtic. They are not porous like the chalk, hence this part of Wilts is less dry than the great table land. The softer beds of the rocks occupy the lower levels while the harder beds : —Coral Eag, Forest Marble and Limestone, form ridges running from N.E. to S.W. across the north-western corner of the county. That Wiltshire was inhabited thousands of years before the Eoman invasion led by Julius Caasar, admits of no doubt whatever. Eemains of rudely chipped flints (tools and weapons) found in the gravel beds of Salisbury and Savernake Forest, take us back to what is knownThankyouas for your" The purchaseOld StoneClick hereAge," to visit when Flatcapsandbonnets.comour island still united to the continent, was roamed over by fearful beasts from the forests of Central Europe, and was the abode of men perhaps scarcely less savage. In course of time however there arrived a race who had learnt how to make good tools and had acquired the art of polishing them. Such tools are found in the "long barrows"—burial places of the mighty dead. Barrows of this shape are not by any means common in Wilts, though a good specimen may be seen at Winterbourne Stoke and another near Silbury Hill. This brings us to " The New Stone Age." But not only have the barrows given up the flints, arrow-heads, daggers, axes and hammers which they contained, they have also furnished us with remains of the people who actually lived in that remote period, and the skulls which they have yielded, point to a race of men with "long heads," dark hair and eyes, and square foreheads and of moderate stature. Thank you for purchasing from Ebay Shop Retromedia Thankyou for your purchase Click here to visit Flatcapsandbonnets.com 4 Notes on Wiltshire Names Much more numerous than the long barrows, are those that are round, and these are found all over the Downs, both in the north and the south of the county. These last, formed the burial places of men with round heads and harsh bony prominent features, who lived in what is now known as " The Bronze Age " (say from 1600 B.C.