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Field-Names, the common and convenient term for minor names which have not achieved the status of place-names, often preserve information important to the historian and to the archaeologist. Their value is well recognized by specialists but not always clearly understood by others. Since field-names are generally found in local, as distinct from national, records, local historians are especially qualified to help in the accumulation of a collection of such names. After a few sentences of advice to secure uniformity of method and to ensure co-ordination, the members of any local historical society, acting as a group or even singly, may build up a valuable collection of field-names. Such work, pursued on systematic lines, would be a real contribution to scholarship, and is already in progress in one or two areas. The following notes attempt to illustrate how the study of field-names may contribute to historical knowledge. They do no more than outline the possibilities and they are confessedly written in the hope that more non-professional Societies will add the formation of a field-name collection to the list of their activities.
1 Examples abound in every district. Readers will no doubt know of some recently built by-pass which is locally known as the ‘New Road’ until after a few years, perhaps, another new road in the neighbourhood usurps this appellation. The original ‘new road’ is then given another popular name. The same gradual change may often be observed in the local, as distinct from the official, names of farms, etc. The point need not be laboured.
2 See especially the volumes for Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Yorkshire East Riding and Yorkshire North Riding.
3 For abbreviations see p. 66.
4 For a detailed discussion of this question see F. T. Wainwright, ‘North-west Mercia, 871-924.’ Trans. Hist. Soc. Lancs, and Ches., 1942 (to be published at an early date).
5 In particular I may mention Mrs Anne Anderson, hon. secretary of the Bromborough Society. Readers interested in Cheshire field-names and/or willing to help in their collection are invited to communicate with Mrs Anderson or with the author.
6 An examination of one or two surviving examples, e.g. Bromborough Rake, suggests that the term, ‘rake’, was applied to any sloping path or road. To interpret it as a ‘defile’ or ‘narrow passage’ seems altogether too strong—at least for the Cheshire usage.
7 Trans. Royal Hist. Soc, 1942, XXIV, 4-5.
8 PNS, III, xix.
9 PNS, XII, xxvii.
10 Journal Chester Arch, and Hist. Soc, 1893, N.S. V, 81.
11 The Domesday Survey of Cheshire. Chetham Society, 1916, LXXV, p. xiii.
12 In Neston parish church.
13 Trans. Royal Hist. Soc, 1940, XXII, 19-20.
14 F. T. Wainwright, ‘The Anglian Settlement of Lancashire’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Lancs.and Ches., 1941, XCIII, 15 note 1 and map.
15 Ibid. p. 15, note 3, for details and references.
16 ANTIQUITY, 1927,1, 153. In this article, ‘Place-names and Archaeology’, some interesting examples of the names of roads or tracks are given, e.g. Ferdway, ‘the fyrd or army road’, Chepingwey, ‘market-road’, etc.
17 ‘Place-names and Archaeology’, PNS, I, part 1, 143-64.
18 ‘Place-names and Archaeology’, ANTIQUITY, 1927, 1, 151-8.
19 Perhaps Bury Camp, some two miles away.
20 Burrough Camp is still an impressive earthwork. It is described in Victoria County History of Leicestershire, I, 247.
21 PNS, XVI, 424.
22 PNS, XVIII, 196.
23 O. G. S. Crawford, ‘Place-names and Archaeology’, op. cit. 150-2.
24 Dictionary of English Place-names, 423.
25 O. G. S. Crawford, op. cit. 152.
26 One of the four is Mutlon (sic), but this is apparently an error.
27 I am greatly indebted to Mrs Anderson who located the Mutlers and extracted the modern name, Motler, from the local farmers.
28 cf. F. M. Stenton, ‘The Historical Bearing of Place-name Studies : Anglo-Saxon Heathenism’. Trans. Royal Hist. Soc, 1941.
29 PNS, X, 84-5.
30 The forms for Flitteris Park are : 1275 RH, bosü de Fliares; 1300, etc. IPM, Fliterys; 1347 IPM, Flitefrith.
31 cf. Bridge End and Bridge Meadow in the Birkenhead map of 1823-4.
32 Other interpretations are possible.