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Place-names from hām, distinguished from hamm names, in relation to the settlement of Kent, Surrey and Sussex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

John McN. Dodgson
John McN. Dodgson
Affiliation:
University College, London
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Extract

The element OE hām, ‘a village, a village community, an estate, a manor, a homestead’, is generally reckoned to belong to an early stratum of English place-names. Within this stratum, and especially in the type in -ingham from OE -ingahām, it is associated with place-names from OE -ingas and -inga- (the genitive composition form). The same common antiquity is noted on the continent between place-names from OHG -heim and those from OHG -ing. In recent years an attempt has been made at a re-appraisal of the value of the place-name from OE -ingas, -inga-, including the numerous -ingahām type, as evidence of the progress of the English settlements, while other recent work has seen the beginning of an examination of the place-names containing OE -hām and the compounds wīc-hīm, hīm-tūn, hām-stede and hām-st(e)all: the distribution of the compound wāc-hām has been shown to be related very particularly to Roman roads and Roman archaeology, and it has been recognized that in Cheshire (see fig. 1), place-names in -ham from -hām and in -ingham (<-ing(a)hām) are distributed in a pattern based on the run of the Roman roads.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 2 , December 1973 , pp. 1 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 1 note 1 EPN 1, 226; DEPN, pp. 213–14. The following abbreviations are used in this article and its appendices: Bach = Bach, A., Deutscbe Namenkunde II: die deutscben Ortsnamen (Heidelberg, 1953–1954)Google Scholar; BCS = Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. Birch, W. de G. (London, 1885–1893)Google Scholar; BNF = Beiträge zur Namenforschung n.F.; DB = Domesday Book, ed. A.Farley and H. Ellis (London, 1783–1816);Google ScholarDEPN = Ekwall, E., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1960);Google ScholarEPN = Smith, A. H., English Place-Name Elements, EPNS 25–6 (Cambridge, 1956)Google Scholar; EPNS = English Place-Name Society; JEPN = Jnl of the Eng. Place-Name Soc.; KPN = Wallenberg, J. K., Kentish Place-Names, a Topographical and Etymological Study of the Place-Name Material in Kentish Charters dated before the Conquest, Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift 1931Google Scholar, Filosofi, Spraåkvetenskap och Historiska Vetenskaper 2 (1931); Margary = Margary, I. D., Roman Roads in Britain, 1 vol. rev. ed. (London, 1967)Google Scholar: the numbers which Margary gives to Roman roads are used below, in both the text and maps; NoB = Namn och Bygd; PN-ing (1) and PN-ingpp(2) = Ekwall, E., English Place-Names in -ing, Skrifter utgivna av Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund 6 (1923) and 2nd ed. (Lund, 1962)Google Scholar; PNK = Wallenberg, J. K., The Place-Names of Kent (Uppsala, 1934)Google Scholar; PNSr = Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A. and Stenton, F. M., with Bonner, A., The Place-Names of Surrey, EPNS 11 (Cambridge, 1934)Google Scholar; PNSx = Mawer, A., Stenton, F. M. and Gover, J. E. B., The Place-Names of Sussex, EPNS 6–7 (Cambridge, 1929 and 1930)Google Scholar; Sandred = Sandred, K. I., English Place-Names in -stead, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia 2 (1963)Google Scholar; Studies (1931) = Ekwall, E., Studies on English Place- and Personal Names, Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund, Ärsberättelse 1930–1931: 1 (Lund, 1931)Google Scholar; Studies (1936) = Ekwall, E., Studies on English Place-Names, Kungl. Vitterhets-, Historie- och Antikvitetsakadamiens Handlingar 42:1 (Stockholm, 1936).Google Scholar

For help in the preparation of this article I am grateful to colleagues at University College London, and in the Survey of English Place-Names: Mr Kenneth Wass of the Department of Geography drew the maps; Professor Randolph Quirk obtained a grant for me from University College towards the cost of the preparation; Mr Alexander Rumble and Miss Joy Hubble verified the more difficult map-references from old editions of the Ordnance Survey maps; Mr Rumble corroborated the reading discussed below, p. 31, n.1; and Mrs Doris Lord made the typescript. To Professor Clemoes I am grateful for his lucid perception and patience as editor.

page 1 note 2 DEPN, p. xv, (b), and EPN 1, 227, (2).

page 1 note 3 DEPN, p. xv, (b); PN-ing (1), pp. xix, 122–8 and 152–8; PN-ing (2), pp. 117–73; and EPN 1, 227, (2) (iii).

page 2 note 1 Bach, pt 2, §§463, 477–8 and 581–5.

page 2 note 2 Smith, A. H., ‘Place-Names and the Anglo-Saxon Settlement’, Proc. of the Brit. Acad. 42 (1956), 67–88Google Scholar; J. McN. Dodgson, ‘The Significance of the Distribution of the English Place-Name in OE -ingas, -inga- in ‘South-East England’, MA 10 (1966), 1–29Google Scholar, and ‘The English Arrival inCheshire’, Trans. of the Hist. Soc. of Lancashire and Cheshire 119 (1967), 1–37Google Scholar; and Kirk, Sarah, ‘A Distribution Pattern: -ingas in Kent’, JEPN 4 (1972), 37–59.Google Scholar

page 2 note 3 For hām-stede see Sandred, pp. 65 and 88.

page 2 note 4 Gelling, Margaret, ‘English Place-Names Derived from the Compound wīchām’, MA 11 (1967), 87–104.Google Scholar

page 2 note 5 Dodgson, ‘The English Arrival in Cheshire’, pp. 10 (fig. 2) and 15.

page 2 note 6 PN-ing (1), p. 163; cf. PN-ing (1) pp. 155ff.

page 2 note 7 Dr Barry Cox is expected to bring out in JEPN 5 (1973) the eagerly awaited results of a study of Midland place-names, in which the distribution of names from OE hām in an extensive tract of country is examined in detail. This will enable us to ascertain whether the Roman road pattern governs this distribution in the larger area as consistently as it does in Cheshire.

page 2 note 8 Bach, pt 2, §§477–8.

page 2 note 9 Work on these, and on the Chiltern region, is in hand.

page 2 note 10 EPNS 12 (Cambridge, 1935), end-pocket.

page 6 note 1 EPN 1, 229, s.v. hamm.

page 6 note 2 DEPN, p. 214, s.v. ham(m).

page 6 note 3 DEPN, ibid., and Bach, pt 1, §§296, 302, 314 and 375.

page 6 note 4 Gelling, Margaret, ‘The Element hamm in English Place-Names: a Topographical Investigation’, NoB 48 (1960), 140–62.Google Scholar

page 8 note 1 Meaney, Audrey L., Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites (London, 1964).Google Scholar

page 8 note 2 Map of Roman Britain, 3rd ed. (Ordnance Survey 1956).Google Scholar

page 8 note 3 Taken from Margary.

page 8 note 4 KPN, PNK, PNSx, PNSr and DEPN.

page 12 note 1 Margary, p. 47.

page 12 note 2 See Sonia Chadwick Hawkes's map, MA 2 (1958), 4, fig. 2.

page 13 note 1 See PNSr, p. 293, s.n. Greatlake Fm and Littlelake Fm; and JEPN 3 (1971), 8 and 19.

page 13 note 2 See Darby, H. C., ‘Place-Names and the Geography of the Past’, Early English and Norse Studies Presented to Hugh Smith in Honour of his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Brown, A. and Foote, P. (London, 1963),Google Scholar pp. 6–18, esp. 14–18.

page 13 note 3 See above, p. 8, n. 3.

page 15 note 1 DEPN, s.n. Leatherhead.

page 19 note 1 MA 10 (1966), 8.

page 20 note 1 See below, App. III1, p. 34, s.n. Baytree.

page 23 note 1 See discussion DEPN, p. 93, s.n. Chadderton.

page 26 note 1 In section (a)2 of the bounds as defined by Rumble, A. R., ‘;The Merstham (Surrey) Charter-Bounds, A.D. 947’, JEPN 3 (1971), 6–31, at pp. 6 and 12–13.Google Scholar

page 26 note 2 For an example of this, cf. Tranmere, Cheshire, EPNS 47, 257–8, where a settlement inland is named after a sandbank offshore or on the coast.

page 27 note 1 See Mawer, A., Stenton, F. M. and Houghton, F. T. S., The Place-Names of Worcestershire, EPNS 4 (Cambridge, 1927), 209.Google Scholar

page 27 note 2 DEPN, s.n.

page 27 note 3 EPN 11, s.v. m???ad???ere.

page 28 note 1 Puslingham ought to have been in the list of ‘ ?-inga-’ place-names in Sussex, MA 10 (1966), 24.Google Scholar

page 28 note 2 See Studies (1936), p. 156, and EPN 11, 265, s.v. wīl.

page 29 note 1 See discussion above, p. 22.

page 30 note 1 Apparently ignored BNF 2 (1967), 372.

page 30 note 2 This is controversial. See DEPN, s.n.; EPNS z, 86; 12, liii; and 14, lvi; PNK, p. 384; PN-ing (1), pp. 67–8; PN-ing (2), p. 47; and Zachrisson, R. E., A Contribution to the Study of Anglo-Norman Influence on English Place-Names (Lund, 1909), p. 89.Google Scholar

page 30 note 3 DEPN, s.n.; PNK, p. 384; and KPN, p. 182.

page 31 note 1 Here also should be noted the lost Hamstede near Hailing (TQ/6864) which appears only in hiuetinbamstedi 765–91 (12th) Textus Roffensis (facsimile ed. P. H. Sawyer), EEMF 7 and 11 (Copenhagen 1957 and 1962) 11, 129r, presented as hiuæinhamstedi in BCS 260; see KPN, p. 75, and Sandred, p. 233. The first el. is OE hīewet, ‘a hewing, a cutting, a place where trees are cut down’; see EPN 1, s.v. The form was mishandled by Birch. Kemble's reading, nearest to the MS form, is preferred by me, Professor Alistair Campbell and Mr Alexander Rumble on palaeographical grounds, whence speedily taken up by Dr Sandred as a corrigendum in NoB 59 (1971), 37–9.Google Scholar

page 34 note 1 See above, App. I, p. 20.

page 42 note 1 See EPN 1, s.v. cēod(e), and E. Ekwall, Studies (1931), p. 70.

page 47 note 1 See EPN II, 237, s.v. *wœsse.

page 48 note 1 See EPN I, s.v.œppel.