A History of English Field Names

John Field

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317897019
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Field names are not only interesting in themselves, but also a rich source of information about the communities originating them. The earliest recorded names often describe only the location or nature of the land, but changes in language, technology, social organisation, land ownership and even religious and political thinking have all contributed to a surprisingly complex picture today. A pioneering history.

CHAPTER ONE

Place-names and field-names

Local historians investigating the development of their own towns and villages will have met, and probably recorded, such strange fieldnames as Sufferlong, Scotch Groats, Shoe Bread Close, Cock’d Hat, Dunkirk and Treacle Nook. Indeed, some studies restrict their selection to those that can be looked upon as ‘quaint’, and ignore or treat as self-explanatory many others, such as Wheat Close, Mill Field, Ten Acres or Red Lands. In this book will be discussed a wide range of English field-names, both strange and commonplace. The meanings of the former may occasionally be disappointing, but both they and many of the ‘ordinary’ ones may prove to be more significant than at first glance they seem. A comparison of early and later forms is intended to show the continuity of the naming system in much of the country, across the divide (both historical and spatial) created by the enclosure of common fields, and a similar development in parts of England in which open fields have not been traced.

The limitation of this work to the field-names of England is for reasons which include the interrelated complexities of language, history, and national cultures, as well as the limitations of the experience of the author. Welsh and Scottish field-names have an interest of their own, but their interpretation will obviously make demands quite different from what is required in the analysis and explanation of their English counterparts. Almost any Welsh survey will include both Welsh and English names. In Llancarfan (Glamorgan) in 1622, for instance, there were fields called Beane Meadowe, Chappie Close, Buttlandes, Calves Close and The Harpeacre, but in 1840 Welsh names were recorded, including Caerceffil ‘horse enclosure’ and Caerbrwynog ‘rushy enclosure’ , as well as others containing terms borrowed from English, e.g. Caer Styill ‘stile close’ and Twyn-y-slade ‘hillock by or with a depression’.

Scottish field-names may be in Gaelic, in Scots or in Southern English. Schuilbraidis is mentioned among the Shovelbroad names in Chapter Six, below, and in the same place (Eyemouth, Berwickshire) there are also HeidlandAcre and Blackcroft, and in Gatehouse of Fleet (Kirkudbrightshire) the modern names Dam Field, Ash Tree Field, Three Corner Field and Cow Park, which have parallels in England. In Wales Hill Park Close, Stubby Land, Castlecroft, Lynacre and Shortlands, in Robeston (Pembrokeshire) in 1607, and The Beane Acre and Higher Middleclose, occurring in Porthkerry (Glamorgan) in 1622, could also have been found in England at the same time or later. To extend the scope of this book to the entire stock of names in the Celtic countries, however, would entail an exploration of the diversity of social customs, field-systems, cultivation practices, land-tenure conventions, law and administration reflected in the terminology, in addition to the details of religious history and personal nomenclature underlying the minor place-names and field-names of Wales and Scotland.

The study of field-names requires an appreciation of the substantial part played by agriculture in the lives of our medieval forebears and its development in subsequent periods. In open-field areas the holdings of tenants would be in separate strips, sometimes widely scattered in the furlongs of three or more fields. After the enclosure of the common fields, the newly created closes also received names, many of which throw considerable light on the social and agricultural history of the township. As well as in parishes with well-documented open fields, for those with no evidence of common-field agriculture, medieval grants and deeds, together with the later records of estates and individual farms, will provide a sequence of field-names often going back several centuries.

So long as the historical layering of the various examples can be observed, and there is evidence to identify the location, it is justifiable to trace the origin of the name of a modern enclosed field back to a form recorded in the thirteenth century or earlier. The modern name may refer to a smaller area than its predecessor, but the users of a name must have given some thought to its appropriateness; otherwise, it has been suggested, they would not have gone on using it, in its developing forms, for several hundred years. This raises the questions, of course, applicable to all names: to what extent do users of a name either understand its literal meaning or pay conscious attention to its significance?

The names themselves are essentially words. Inevitably, therefore, the discussion of their individual development will be primarily in terms of language, although all place-names (including field-names) must be viewed in their historical and geographical contexts. Many names found in the early records still exist, changed only by normal linguistic developments, or even, like many surnames, surviving in a form long obsolete in corresponding words of the current language. The emphasis in this book will be on the generation and development of field-names; their meanings will be explored in the light of the history of the English language and the progress of agriculture, technology and society itself.

Field-names of all periods differ in structure from major place-names. Most major names (i.e. the names of settlements, including cities, towns and villages) are single words, e.g. Brighton, Tring, Sunderland or Carlisle. Field-names usually consist of two recognizably separate words, e.g. North Field, Wood Furlong, Mill Close, even though occasionally in both earlier and modern forms the parts are combined, e.g. Eastmedowe or Millfield. The terms specific element or specifier, for the first word of the phrase, and generic or denominative, for the second, describe their respective functions and enable the significance of each to be established. The definite article, rarely found in major place-names, is used in a good many fieldnames, but often no particular importance seems to have been placed on its inclusion or omission. In a minority of field-names, the number of components may be increased by qualifiers or modifying phrases, so that forms such as Hill Close may develop into Nether Hill Close and then become First (Second, Third, etc.)Nether Hill Close, or even produce such wordy paradoxes as Far Part of Near Nether Hill Close. Usually there is no difficulty in distinguishing the parts into which a single large close has been divided and determining the underlying name.

The techniques of interpreting field-names follow the normal practices of place-name study. Precise spellings are collected from all accessible archive material. The languages of the elements in the earliest forms of the names must be discovered and the possible reasons for any subsequent changes explored. Then a meaning may be suggested by exploring the significance of the elements when the name was first used.¹ It is also necessary to examine the agricultural background and factors in the history and topography of the locality. These include, where appropriate, the size, location and conformation of the land, soil and natural life, crops and livestock, buildings, ownership and matters connected with religion, folklore, recreation, social conditions and public administration.

Terms from the languages of pre-Saxon Britain which had some influence in name formation are much rarer in the field-names of most English counties than in river-names and the names of major settlements. The substantial body of Celtic field-names in Cornwall is now being revealed, and the Celtic origin of some elements in field-names in other parts of the country is also duly recognized. Useful comparisons can also be made between the English fieldnames and their counterparts in Wales and Scotland. Welsh fieldnames in Cumbria and in the English border counties are not ignored, but there is no evidence that more than a small minority of these date from the centuries of the Roman occupation or earlier periods.

The elements composing field-names of English origin are customarily given in the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) form, sometimes in a dialectal variant. A number of these elements can be identified in the names of features recorded as landmarks in Anglo-Saxon charter bounds. Relatively few field-names, however, can be traced in an unbroken sequence all the way back to the Saxon period, and the earliest forms of many names would be more accurately described as Middle English.

In the area of England known as the Danelaw, names of Scandinavian origin are encountered, as well as many terms of mixed parentage. If large numbers of Scandinavian words occur in the fieldnames of an area, even where the village-names are mostly English, it is safe to infer that there was a considerable Danish or Norse presence there when the names were first recorded,² but it is hazardous to draw chronological conclusions about Scandinavian settlement on the basis of field-names. Difficulties arise from the similarity between Old English and Scandinavian terms for the same thing, e.g. Old English cecer and Old Norse akr both meaning ‘a plot of arable land’, but occasionally similar words mean different things, e.g. Old English geat ‘a gate’ and Old Norse gata ‘a way, a road’, either of which may lie at the root of later names ending in -gate.

Such generics as Close and Piece entered Middle English from French. Malpas, which occurs as a major name in Cheshire, appears as a field-name in several counties; other names of French origin are Boverie 1296 ‘an ox-farm’, in Culworth (Nthants) and The Vatcherie 1546 ‘the dairy-farm’, in Maresfield (Sus). In early records the article Le (or, apparently indiscriminately, La) often gives the misleading impression that a name is French, e.g. La Vente 1355, in Boarstall (Bucks), which is the dialectal form vent from Old English fent ‘a split or rift’. In some documents otherwise written throughout in Latin, names will often be found in their English form, but they are sometimes Latinized or are converted into terms derived from post- Classical Vulgar Latin.

The names devised for closes created in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and many of those listed in Tithe Apportionments, embody terms from current modern English. Obviously some field-names with a long history contain Middle English or Old English elements, and rural dialect words enter into the composition of others. Acreage names are quite frequent, and the family names of owners or occupiers of all periods are often brought into service. Unfamiliar terms will be found in names such as Catsbrain, Piletts and Neat, used respectively for certain types of soil, crops and farm animals, as well as the numerous popular names for wild plants and the creatures of the countryside. Unprofitable land is picturesquely castigated, fertile fields receive complimentary names, and to closes at some distance from the village the names of remote places are occasionally given. In addition to these, and a few other main categories, there are exotic names bestowed upon the fields seemingly quite capriciously and yet surviving for many generations.

A further distinction between field-names and major place-names is to be found in the difference between the records which are for the student the principal sources of information. Early forms of major names are discoverable in large numbers in charters and similar documents issued by the Crown, and in the records of departments of central government, or of the London-based courts of law. The principal (but not the sole) sources of early field-names will be records originating and still preserved in or near the localities concerned. Important cartularies (medieval collections of transcribed charters), rentals, registers and s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Approaches to Local history
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of plates
• Editorial preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Place-names and field-names
• Chapter 2 Common fields and the process of enclosure
• Chapter 3 Field-names and the landscape
• Chapter 4 Woodlands and wild life
• Chapter 5 A living from the land
• Chapter 6 Descriptions of size, shape and distance
• Chapter 7 Transfer and transplantation
• Chapter 8 Tenure and endowment
• Chapter 9 Buildings, transport and manufacturing industry
• Chapter 10 Religion, folk customs and assembly places
• Chapter 11 Work in progress and prospect
• Appendix
• General Index
• Index of Field-Names