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PLACE NAMES IN KENT.

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MAIDSTONE: "South Eastern Gazette" Newspaper Co., Ltd., 4, High Street. 1921.

INDEX

Page. Place-names of Celtic Origin 9 Roman Names in Kent 17 Teutonic Names in Kent 20 Saxon or Jutish Suffixes 26 Some Common Saxon Elements in Place-names 29 The Northmen in Kent 42 The Islands of Kent 46 Variations in the Spelling of Place-names 49 Ecclesiastical Place-names 52 Place-names from Persons 54 Absurdities in Derivation 57 Our "Tons" and "Stones" 60 Our "Hams" 63 Our "Soles," "Burys" and "Hithes" 68 Our "Cold Harbours" 71 Anderida 74 Land Divisions of Kent 78

INTRODUCTION.

In some parts of England and Wales this study of local place names has been taken up with enthusiasm by teachers and scholars, and in this connexion it should be noted that the names of every lane, house, and field and wood, should be ascertained and recorded, even if no meaning can be found. Names of this kind change, and the old folk who could say why a name was given will not be always with us. "Terriers" and Tithe Maps, which can be consulted, if not borrowed, will give more names than ordinary maps.

To such enquiries we may be stimulated by shame when we know that Kent is one of the counties without a work on its place names, and even more by the fact that Norway has been at work in this direction since 1896--the Church and the State collaborating and a State grant helping in the production of the nineteen volumes already published. So too, in Sweden, a committee was appointed by Royal authority in 1901, and one province has already been dealt with exhaustively. Denmark also from 1910, under the Ministry of Education, and with State grants, thus recognised the linguistic and historico-archaeological importance of such studies.

And yet none of these enlightened and progressive kingdoms have anything like the advantage that England possesses in its Saxon Charters and its Domesday Book. More honour to them, more shame to us!

Let it be clearly understood, however, from the first that I am not writing as an expert on these matters, nor as having a direct knowledge of Celtic or of Saxon. All I have attempted has been simply to collect, for the benefit of those who shall be attracted to the study of our place-names as elucidating the ancient history of the County, information from many sources which will save them the time and labour of finding out for themselves whether a particular name is old enough to be found in Domesday Book, or in later Saxon charters and wills; and especially there has been in my mind the hope that a committee may be appointed to deal as well with Kent as other Counties have been, especially by the great Anglo-Saxon scholars, Professor Skeats, Professor Craigie, of Oxford, and Professor Mawer, of Newcastle. For such literary artizans and architects as I hope may shortly arise, I am more than content to have been but a day labourer, a collector of material which others may find worthy of scrutiny and perhaps of use.

PLACE NAMES IN KENT.

Place Names of Celtic Origin.

Kent itself in the earliest records is found as Ceant from the Celtic Cenn--a head or headland, which again appears on the other side of our land as the Mull of Cantire. We have also our Chevening, which, like Chevenage, embodies the Celtic Cefn--ridge . And "Kits Coty House" on our neighbouring Down gives us Ked--a hollow, and Coit--a wood, i.e., the hollow dolmen in the wood. Mote Park sounds modern enough to some; but our "park" is the Celtic parwyg, an enclosed place, while the much later Anglo-Saxon Mote denotes a place of local assembly. Dun was their word for a hill-fort, and so we have Croydon for the fortress on the chalk range, though most of the old British fortresses which preserved the name when occupied by Romans or Saxons are in other counties. Penshurst, on the other hand, has a Saxon suffix to the Celtic Pen, still unchanged in Welsh as meaning a head or hill, perhaps only a dialectic form of the Gaelic Ceann, or Ken, which we have already noted in "Kent."

This mighty race has left us little record, though its language survives in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. In Maidstone Museum we can study its weapons, its ornaments, and its methods of sepulture; but in our walks in Kent we are rarely reminded of its long, as well as ancient, occupation of the soil. Yet in what we might consider the purest English some undoubtedly Celtic words survive, such as basket, crook, kiln, fleam, barrow, ashlar, rasher, mattock, bran, gown, flannel.

Availing myself of what has been written by Celtic or Saxon scholars, I turn to the river names of Kent, of which some are obviously Celtic and others as obviously Saxon.

Ash.--The western branch of the Stour is so named, and Ashford was anciently Esshetsford. Rivers have sometimes been named from the trees on their banks, and besides our Ash-ford, we find elsewhere Ashbrook and Ashbourne; though the common Celtic esk for water or river may also be considered. In this connection I note that in a direct line we have near Detling, Boxley, Thornham, Hollingbourne , possibly Bearsted from the Saxon Berc for birch, and Ashford from Aesc, our ash.

Brook.--This later, or English, name for a small stream appears only as a termination. We have Cranbrook, a reminder, like Cranbourne elsewhere, of the time when cranes were not uncommon in England. These are the places: Brook, a village on a tributary of the Stour; Brookland, near a branch of the Rother; and Brook Street, near Woodchurch. And may not Kidbrooke, or Kedbrook, be "the brook from the Coed"--the Celtic word for a wood?

Bourne.--The Anglo-Saxon Burne for stream appears not only in the Bourne and Bourne Park, and the various Nail-bournes, or intermittently flowing brooks, but also in Bekesbourne, Bishopsbourne, Patrixbourne, Littlebourne, the Ravensbourne, Hollingbourne, Brabourne , Northbourne, and perhaps Sittingbourne, although this is on a creek rather than a brook.

Darent.--Like Dover's Dour, from the Celtic root Dur for water or river, comes the Der-went, of which Darent is a variation. Dwr-gwyn in Welsh is the clear water. There are four Derwents in England, besides Lake Derwent Water. Dartford is the ford of the Darent.

Dour.--The living Celtic tongues of Wales, Ireland and Scotland preserve the Celtic Dur--Dwr in Welsh, Dur in Gaelic and Erse. There are other Dours in Fife and Aberdeen, and the Dover or Dur-beck in Notts, and in Sussex the Roman itinerary gives Portum Adurni, whence it has been assumed that there was an Adour river. But Prichard gives forty-four ancient names containing this root in Italy, Germany, Gaul, and Britain.

Eden.--The Eden, on which is Edenbridge, is a tributary of the Medway. Various rivers of this name are found also in Cumberland, Yorks, Fife and Roxburgh, containing the Celtic root Dan, Don, or Den, for water or river.

Len.--This short tributary of the Medway has been neglected by writers on place-names; but it might be the Celtic Levn, smooth, as in Loch Leven and three rivers of that name in Scotland, besides others in Gloucestershire, Yorks, Cornwall, Cumberland, and Lancashire.

Quaggy.--One of the two brooks at Lewisham. Quag may be the same as Quag in quagmire, and the second syllable the Anglo-Saxon "ea" for water or river, cognate with the old High German "aha" and the Latin "aqua." In Rosetti's poem we find "I fouled my feet in quag-water."

Ravensbourne.--When Teutonic colonists or invaders, dispossessing the Celts, inquired the name of a stream, they took the Celtic word to be a proper instead of a common name, and so added their own name for water or river. Later, when the English tongue was evolved, "water" was sometimes added to the Celtic, or Celtic-plus-Saxon, name. Thus, in Wansbeck-water, Wan is Alfon and Evon; S is a vestige of the Gadhelic visge; Beck is the Norse addition; and Water the later English when it was forgotten what Wansbeck meant. Thus our present name means River-water-river-water! So Ravensbourne is really the Celtic Avon, with the Saxon addition of Bourne, so common in Kent for stream.

Rother.--A mainly Sussex stream which forms part of the boundary of Kent. It is said to be the Celtic Rhud-dwr--that is Red Water.

Stour.--There are other rivers of this name in Suffolk, Dorset, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, besides the St?r in Holstein, the Stura, a tributary of the Po, and the Stura in Italy, all probably named from the union of two Celtic words for water, Is and Dwr. Some regard it as merely the intensitive of Dwr, as in Welsh the prefix Ys is used to intensify. Note that a unique river name is a rarity.

Swale.--Bede, the Saxon historian, writes of the baptisms by S. Paulinus, in the Sualua. This is the Swale, which makes Sheppey an island. There are the East and the West Swale and Swalecliff, and the origin may be from the Anglo-Saxon Swellan, to swell. There are other Swales in Britain and Germany.

Thames.--This means the Broad, or Still, Water, from the Celtic adjective Tam and the root Is for water, which is reduplicated in the name Isis for the river at Oxford, higher than where the Thames falls into it. There is a river Tame in four of our counties.

Wantsum.--This much-dwindled stream separates Thanet from the mainland, and is called Wantsumu by Bede. The word is said to be not Celtic ; but Teutonic. Want or Went, meant a Way, and Som had the same qualifying force as in the word "winsome," that is, equivalent to the "able" in "lovable." There is a Wensum, a tributary of the Yare, near Norwich. While in early days the north branch of the Stour by Thanet was not fordable, this water was "go-able"--to coin a word. The "way" is not necessarily a water way. At Ightham, Seven Vents is the name of a place where seven roads meet.

Yenlade or Yenlet.--"Applied by Lewis to the north and south mouths of the estuary of the Wantsum, which made Thanet an island. The A.S. gen-lad means a discharging of a river into the sea, or a smaller river into one larger." Ladan or hladan means to load or lade. Lambarde wrote in 1570 "Yenlade or yenlet betokeneth an Indraught or Inlett of water into the land." There are two or three places of this name in the mouth of the Thames. Yantlet Creek is in the Isle of Grain.

Beult.--The final t is not found in the earliest records I have seen, where the name is Beule. One of our best Kent archaeologists suggests the Saxon verb Beauland, to turn or twist, as the origin. I think, however, we may go further back and find no exception to the rule that most of our rivers were named by the Celts, for I find the Erse or Irish Buol or Biol for water, and in addition to Continental rivers which contain this root there is the Buil in Ireland, the Beela in Westmorland, and the Beauly in Inverness.

Roman Names in Kent.

The names given to the two Roman fortresses which guarded the Wantsum , Regulbium and Rutupiae, were hard for Saxon lips, and so were changed into Raculf-cestre, whence Reculvers, and Repta-caester, later Ratesburgh, whence our Richborough. So also the Roman name of Rochester--Durobrevis became in Saxon times, Roribis, then Hrofibrevi. This was shortened into Hrofi, which again was later assumed to be the name of a man, and so Bede gives us Hrofes-caester, whence our Rochester.

Chislet, however, earlier Cistelet, probably preserves the Roman Casteletum, a small castle or camp. And Cheriton is said to be derived as to its first two syllables from cerasus, cherry, the Romans having introduced this tree about A.D. 60. They also brought the plum--prunes--and so we get our Plumstede for Plumstead, adjoining Woolwich, and Plumford, in Ospringe.

Also where Wick as a termination is not the Scandinavian Wic or Bay, and so a coastal name, it comes from the Latin Vicus, a row of houses, and is the Saxonised form. Thus our West Wickham, Wickhambreux, Sheldwich, and so forth, record how the Saxons adopted but changed the name given by the Romans. McClure suggests that Faversham may be a survival of the Latin Faber, smith, in the most Latinized part of Kent, and on their chief road. The first part of the word is plainly a genitive case, and there seems to be no similar Saxon designation.

Few, indeed, are the verbal relics of the Romans, though they were here for 400 years. While the earlier Celts have bequeathed to us many words and names, but few works, the Romans left us few words but some mighty works.

Teutonic Names in Kent.

The Romans who had conquered, ruled, and exploited our land for four centuries, departed in A.D. 411, owing to the dire necessity of defending their own land against the Goths from Northern Europe. Already here they had been attacked and pressed southwards by the Picts of the Highlands, aided by the Scots of Ireland. To avoid Pictish conquest the Britons offered land and pay to the English, who up to then had been aiding the Picts.

Who were these English? A long peninsula runs northwards from Denmark, and separates the North Sea from the Baltic. Herein, our real home or cradle, dwelt three tribes of the Low German stock, Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, and as to Kent it was the Jutes from Jutland who, under Hengist and Horsa, in A.D. 449, landed at Ebbsfleet in Thanet, as did others in the Isle of Wight, the Islands in both cases forming a great naval and military station, from which the hinterlands of Kent and Hants could be overrun. The later, and larger, seizures of the Saxons were all the southern counties, Essex, Sussex, Middlesex, and Wessex, while the sphere of the Angles spread upwards from what we still call East Anglia. Quarrels with these mercenaries arose as to pay, and the Britons of Kent resolved to fight. Hrofesceastre was too strong, and so southward turned Hengist along the Celtic country by Kits Coty House, and then swooped down on Aylesford and won a battle which meant the winning of England. Horsa fell in the moment of victory, and the flint heap of Horsted preserves his name, and has been held to mark his grave. Kentish landowners fled to France; the British labourers to the vast forest; churches gave no sanctuary, for the heathen Jutes raged most against the clergy.

And so for two centuries the war of dispossession and slaughter went on, until Britain was a land, not of Britons, but of Englishmen , while even of their language, as we have seen, few words lingered. Six years later the shore-castles of Dover, Richborough, and Lympne succumbed. Then, in A.D. 447, another tribe, the Saxons, came for a share in the goodly spoil, overran Anderida, the fortress of the great forest, and "slew all that were herein, nor was there afterwards one Briton left," at any rate, in Kent. This Saxon, or strictly speaking, Jutish, invasion has given us most of our blood, and the greater part of our tongue, our territorial divisions, most names of places, and those of the days of the week.

If we may thus distinguish two classes of place names which survive in Kent, we have the Bobbings at Bobbing, the H?cings at Hucking, the Harlings at Harling, the Boerlings at Barling, the Berlings at Birling, the Bollings at Bowling, the Garlings at Garlinge, the Hallings at Halling, the Hircelings at Hecklinge, the Horings at Herringe, the Mollings at Mailing, the Wealings at Welling, the Beltings at Beltring, the Cerrings at Charing, the Petlings at Pedling, the Wickings at Witchling, the Bermarings at Barming. In one case, however, an individual is commemorated in a place-name--Hemmings Bay, near Margate, is the scene of the landing of a Danish chieftain in 1009 A. D. There were many Saxons in Thanet under Roman rule , but few place names are found there of the patronymic kind, the exceptions being Garlinge, Birchington, Halling Court, Osinghelle, Ellington, and Newington--of which some are doubtful. What about Detling? one of my readers may say. I inclined for some time to the meaning deep meadow , in allusion to its position between the vast forest above and the extensive marshes below; but Mr. McClure will not hear of "ing" a meadow, in the South of England, and one Oxford Professor of Anglo-Saxon writes me as follows: "The evidence for ing 'meadow,' south of Lincolnshire is so scanty or dubious that it would require pretty strong evidence to establish its recurrence in Kent place-names." In that case one must fall back upon a Saxon ancestor, and lately in Maidstone were found both Major D'Aeth and Mr. De'Ath, whose families would be Deathlings in early Saxon days.

Then, of offshoots, we have in Kent the AElingtons at Allington, the Ellings at Ellington, the Aldings at Aldington, the Eorpings at Orpington, the Bennings at Boddington, the Gillings at Gillingham, the Cennings at Kennington, the Cosings at Cossington, the Dodings at Doddington, the Doefings at Davington, the Leasings at Lossenham, the Poefings at Pevington, the Syfings at Sevington, the Wickings at Wickinghurst, the Lodings at Loddington, the Ellings at Ellington, the Bosings at Bossingden , the Adings at Addington, the OEslings at Ashlingham, and possibly the Beecings at Birchington and Beckenham. As illustrating the westward migration of the Teutonic race we may note, to take one clan, that, starting from Germany, the Hemings name Hemingen in Germany, Hemminghausen in Westphalia, Hemingstadt in Holstein, Heming in Lorraine and in Alsace, Hemington in Northamptonshire and Somerset, and Hemingbrough in Yorks.

I may here add some instances of what in some cases aids, and in other cases hinders, a knowledge of the origin and meaning of a place-name--that is the very various ways in which the name has been spelled. Generally, the earlier the form the better guide to the meaning. It will be found that spelling was often so vague that even a lawyer in writing an old record or will may spell a name differently in the same document, and in most cases in mediaeval times the sound of the word ruled its spelling. Some examples of multiform names in Kent I give here.

Edenbridge.--Edeling-bridge, 1225, Ethonbrigge 1457, Edonbregge 1473, Edinbregg and Edingbregg 1483, Etonbrigge 1499, Etonbreg 1528, Etonbridge 1534, Edulwestbridge 1539, with other forms of which I have not noted the dates, Edelmesbrigge, Pons Edelmi. The bridge element is clear throughout, but it would also seem that the old name of the river Eden was the Edel. Of this there may be evidence which I have not yet come across.

Bethersden in its earliest form is Beatrichesdenne , which, on the analogy of other places, would seem to point to the church being dedicated to a local S. Beatrice; but at the same date, and since, its patron saint was S. Margaret. Possibly an heiress Beatrice held the manor, as Patrixbourne is called, not from the saint of the Church, but from one who held the manor, which in Domesday was simply called Bourne. Later I find Beterisdenne 1389, Betrycheden 1468, Betresden 1535, Beatherisden 1552, and later Beathersden, Beddersden , and Bethersden.

Charing is Ciorminege in a Saxon charter of 799 A.D., which proved too hard for old English or middle English mouths, so that one finds many later variants, such as Cheerynge 1396, Carings, Cerringes , Cherrving , and at last Charing in 1505.

Cuxton, probably derived from a personal name, like Cuckfield in Sussex, is Codestane in Domesday, Coklestone 1472, Cokston 1503, Cokynston 1533, Coxston 1538, Cokestone 1559, and Codstan, Coklestane, Colestane, Cukelstane, and Cookstone in other documents.

Goodneston, near Ash and Wingham, is no doubt Goodwin's Town, and once had the name of "Godstanstone-les-Elmes, alias Nelmes, near Wingham." In 1208 it was Gutsieston, but in 1512 had settled down into Godenston, previous variations having been Goldstaneston, Gounceston, Groceston, Gusseton, and Guston.

Saxon or Jutish Suffixes.

In the earliest days of which we have knowledge all Kent was practically either forest or marsh, with a little cornland in Thanet and sheep pastures in Sheppey, and it was plainly on the edges of the forests that the early settlers from Jutland made their homes. Like pioneer backwoodsmen in Canada and elsewhere, they had first to clear of trees, and then to fence, the spot each family had chosen. For 25 years I have passed annually through the agricultural districts of Belgium, Alsace, Lorraine, and Switzerland , and two things always strike me--that English agriculturists are not on the whole so thrifty, so tidy, or so hardworking, as their Continental brethren, and that abroad they seem to have neither need nor desire for hedges or other fences. Our colonists in England, however, show in place-names how necessary they thought enclosures to be.

Some Common Saxon Elements in Place-Names.

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