THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES.
^Liverpool . . . t/tai Saxon hive.' — Matthew Arnold.
' Liverpool . . . the greatest covunercial city in the world'
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
' That's a great city, and those are the lamps. It's Liverpool.'
' Christopher Tadpole ' (A. Smith).
' In the United Kingdom there is no city luhichfrom early days
has inspired me with so -much interest, none which I zvould so
gladly serve in any capacity, however humble, as the city of
Liverpool.'
Rev. J. E. C. Welldon.
THE PLACE-NAMES OF THE
LIVERPOOL DISTRICT;
OR,
^he l)i0torj) mxb Jttciining oi the ^oral aiib llibev
^mncQ oi ,S0xitk-to£0t |£ancashtrc mxlb oi SEirral
BY
HENRY HARRISON,
•respiciendum est ut discamus ex pr^terito.
LONDON :
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.
1898.
'^0
SIR JOHN T. BRUNNER, BART.,
OF "DRUIDS' CROSS," WAVERTREE,
MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR THE NOKTHWICH
DIVISION OF CHESHIRE,
THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY HIS OBEDIENT SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR.
807311
CONTENTS.
PACE
INTRODUCTION --.--. 5
BRIEF GLOSSARY OF SOME OF THE CHIEF ENGLISH
PLACE-NAME COMPONENTS - - - "17
DOMESDAY ENTRIES - - - - - 20
LINGUISTIC ABBREVIATIONS, ETC. - - - 23
LIVERPOOL ------- 24
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY - - - "33
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL - - - - - 75
LIST OF WORKS QUOTED - - - - - lOI
INTRODUCTION.
This little onomasticon embodies, I believe, the first at-
tempt to treat the etymology of the place-names of the
Liverpool district upon a systematic basis. In various
local and county histories endeavours have here and there
been made to account for the origin of certain place-names,
but such endeavours have unfortunately only too frequently
been remarkable for anything but philological, and even
topographical, accuracy. They are, however, generally
chronicled, as a matter of record, in the present mono-
graph, with such criticism and emendation as may have
been thought necessary.
The science of philology has made rapid strides since
the days when Syers, in his History of Everton, solemnly
asserted that etymology, a branch of philology, was neither
more nor less than " guessology " ; but even to-day, after all
the accessible historical and philological evidence bearing
upon a name has been thoroughly sifted and carefully
weighed, there sometimes remains an element of uncer-
tainty that creates a hiatus which must be filled by guess-
ing — but, still, by what Professor Skeat has called, in this
connection, " reasonable guessing,"^ not the kind of etymo-
^ Dr. Sweet says, in the preface to his new Anglo-Saxon Dictionary:
'The investigator of Old Enghsh ... is often obliged to work by
guesswork, until some one else guesses better."
6 INTRODUCTION
logical jumping at conclusions which has, for example,
induced a Welshman to claim that the name Apollo is
derived from the Cymric Ap-Jiaul, ' Son of the Sun ' ; an
Irishman to assert that the Egyptian deity Osiris was of
Hibernian descent, and that the name should consequently
be written O'Siris; a Cornishman, saturated with the
Phoenician tradition, to declare that his Honeyball is a
corruption of Hannibal ; a Scotsman to infer an affinity
between the Egyptian Pharaoh and the Gaelic Fergus ; and
even an Englishman to calmly asseverate that Lambeth
(the ' lamb-hithe '), containing the palace of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, derived its name from the Thibetan llama,
'high-priest,' and the Hebrew beth, ' house.'
While, however, in England, we bring our guessing
powers into operation only, as a rule, after the lapse of
centuries, in America it sometimes happens that a place
receives its name one day and the next (so to speak) the
origin of that name is shrouded in mystery, as witness the
following characteristic extract from a recent number of a
Western States journal :
" Nobody around the oilfields seems to know why the new field is
called Chipmunk. Most aver that it has always been Chipmunk ever
since the time of the mound-builders. Others have it that the first
white settler was eaten by chipmunks, ever since which notable event
a pure white chipmunk has haunted the valley, scaring other chipmunks
to death. Chii)munk may also be called Chipmunk because there are
no chipmunks there."
In order to impose a more or less recognised limit upon
the so-called district of Liverpool, it has, for the purpose of
this treatise, been divided into two hundreds — that of West
Derby, which comprises practically the whole of south-west
Lancashire, and that of Wirral, which embraces the tongue
of land separating the estuary of the Mersey from that of
the Dee. The names enumerated in the body of the work,
which is arranged in alphabetical form with respect to the
two hundreds, I have summarized herewith, according to
their linguistic origin :
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INTRODUCTION g
The chief fact to be gathered from these lists is that
both in south-west Lancashire and in Wirral the Anglo-
Saxon names are about three times as numerous as those
of Norse origin ; and it was to be expected that, in a part
of the country which was wrested from the British at a
later period than is assigned to the Saxon conquest of most
of the remaining portions of what ultimately came to be
called England, distinct traces of Celtic nomenclature should
be met with.^
" Letters, like soldiers," that acute philologist Home
Tooke once observed, " are very apt to desert and drop off
in a long march." Of this truism the vicinity of Liverpool
is not behind other districts in affording good illustrations.
The Norse Otegrimele and Otringemele, as chronicled in
Domesday, have descended to us in the attenuated form of
Orrell ; Levetesham is now Ledsham ; Stochestede, Toxteth ;
Chenulveslei, Knowsley ; Herleshala, Halsall ; and so on.
On the other hand, there are names which, in the course
of time, have added a trifle to their length. Oxton at one
period was Oxon ; Speke was Spec.
Luckily we are not blessed — or the reverse — with many
names of the " funny " order, or even of that American
genus against which Matthew Arnold declaimed : " When
our race has built Bold Street, Liverpool, and pronounced
it very good," caustically observed the author of T/ie Study
of Celtic Literahire (p. 175), " it hurries across the Atlantic
and builds Nashville, and Jacksonville, and Milledgeville,
1 \yords\vorth, whose Poems on the Naming of Places will be
familiar to the reader, has well expressed in verse the changes wrought
in Britain by the Saxon Conquest —
" Another language spreads from coast to coast ;
Only perchance some melancholy stream
And some indignant hills old names preserve,
When laws, and creeds, and people all are lost !" —
Monastery of Old Bangor.
lo INTRODUCTION
and thinks it is fulfilling the designs of Providence in an
incomparable manner."
Possibly Arnold may have borne in mind, too, the
ludicrous origin of such American place-names as Elberon
(L. B. Brown), Carasaljo (Carrie, Sally, and Joe), Eltopia
(Hell-to-pay), and Nameless, which last-mentioned town
received its incongruous designation because a lazy postal
official at Washington, having repeatedly been urged by the
inhabitants of a new and thriving village in Laurens County,
Georgia, to select a name for it, at last testily telegraphed
to the astonished settlers, " Let it remain nameless " ; and
Nameless accordingly the place has been ever since. But,
as I have remarked, we of the Liverpool district have very
few of the kind of names at which an American once poked
revengeful fun in a set of verses, one of which ran :
"At Scrooby and at Gonexby,
At Wigton and at Smeeth,
At Bottesford and Runcorn,
I need not grit my teeth ;
At Swineshead and at Crummock,
At Sibsey and Spithead,
Stoke Pogis and Wolsoken,
I will not wish me dead."
Still we have to confess, with some degree of sadness, to
a Puddington, a Mollington, a Noctorum, and a Greasby,
all in Wirral ; while, as to the Lancashire side of the
Mersey, we have often seen and heard prettier and more
euphonious names than, say, Ravensmeols, Bold, Maghull,
Skelmersdale, and Chowbent. Even a silver-tongued White-
field, who was reputed to be able to " pronounce ' Mesopo-
tamia' so as to make a congregation weep," would, we
should imagine, have experienced some difficulty in invest-
ing with charm the utterance of the names which we have
just enumerated.
INTRODUCTION II
I have compiled (with special reference to the Hundreds
of West Derby and Wirral) and appended to the Introduc-
tion a brief glossary of some of the most frequently occurring
English place-name components. It might perhaps be con-
sidered amply sufficient when we recollect the Elizabethan
Verstegan's oft misquoted couplet :
" In ford, in ham, in ley, and tun,
The most of English surnames [place-names] run."
{Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities. )
But we must not forget that, as Kemble says {Cod. Dipl.
iii. XV.), speaking of Anglo-Saxon place-nomenclature :
•' The distinctions between even the slightest differences in
the face of the country are marked with a richness and
accuracy of language which will surprise ..." The com-
ponents embodied in another well-worn distich :
" By tre, pol, and pen,
Ye shall know the Cornishmen,"
do not, of course, come within the scope of the glossary.
Mention should be made of the difficulties which the
Norman Conquest was the means of strewing, like caltrops
or chevaux-de-frise, in the path of the investigator of Anglo-
Saxon nomenclature. "The Normans," says Skeat, "spelt
Anglo-Saxon names anyhow." "The Normans," Kemble
grumbled, referring to the terms in Anglo-Saxon charters,
"could not even spell the words." "The loose manner
of spelling the names of English places in Doomsday Book
cannot," observed Gregson in his Portfolio of Fragmetits,
" be wondered at when it is considered that the Normans
had the chief hand in compiling the returns."
Hardy, in his Introduction to the Close Rolls, portions
of which essay have been borrowed by the writers of the
12 INTRODUCTION
Pipe Roll Society's introductory volume as being also
applicable to the rolls with which they were dealing, re-
marks : " Great ambiguity prevails in the proper names of
persons and places which occur on the Close Rolls ; for
these were either Latinized or Gallicized, whenever it was
possible to do so, according to the fancy of the scribe or
the degree of knowledge which he happened to possess.
Thus he rendered into Latin or French a Norman or
Saxon appellation just as he happened to prefer the one
to the other. . . . Whitchurch is sometimes written
De Albo Monasterio, sometimes Blancmuster or Blaunc-
mustier."
Mr. G. Grazebrook, in a paper read before the Society of
Antiquaries in February, 1897, on the spelling of mediaeval
names, submitted a list of sixty-one various forms in which
the name Grazebrook is found from the year 1200.
A good instance of the vagaries of a Norman writer or
copyist of Anglo-Saxon is supplied in a MS. of ' The
Proverbs of Alfred,' upon which Professor Skeat read a
paper in May, 1897, at a meeting of the Philological Society
{Athenccum, May 15, '97). The Norman scribe who wrote
out this MS. has, amongst other blunders and peculiarities,
t, and occasionally d, for final th, and, conversely, th for
the English final t ; st (with long s) for the final ^A/; s for
sh^ as sal for shal ; w for wh, as wat for what ; cherril for
cJmrl ; arren for am; welethe for welt he ; chil for child;
wen for went ; kinc for king ; wrsipe for tvorship ; hujit for
htind, and ant for a7id. And when we find, to carry
example a little further, an Anglo-Saxon Hweorfanliealh
transformed in Domesday into Vurvenele, there is little
ground for wonder that the pursuit of the etymology of a
local name should sometimes be a tedious operation,
although it must be said that there is scarcely need to
INTRODUCTION 13
spend the leisure of thirty years in endeavouring to ascer-
tain the origin of a single place-name, as a resident of
Kensington recently confessed in JVbfes and Queries to
have done.
Of course, many amateur topographical derivation hunters
lose considerable time in persistently endeavouring to trace
the first element of an English place-name to some physical
feature or characteristic, simple or complex, when all the
time the prefix is often merely a personal name, possibly
somewhat corrupted. It has probably been the fashion in
all ages, and in all countries, for personal nomenclature to
be used, in greater or less degree, in place designation :
" And Cain . . . builded a city, and called the name of
the city after the name of his son Enoch." — Gen. iv. 17.
" And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name
of Dan their father."— y?^^^^^ xviii. 29.
For the benefit of the general reader it may not be thought
superfluous to state that, of the two State Records of which
the most frequent mention is made in the course of the
monograph, the immortal Domesday Book was completed
in A.D. 1086 ; while the Testa de Nevill, or, to give the
Exchequer collection its full title, ' Testa de Nevill, sive
Liber Feodorum in Curia Scaccarii,' relates ostensibly, and
with little actual variation, to the times of Henry III. and
Edward I. (1216 to 1307), and was compiled at the begin-
ning of the reign of Edward III. The collection of Anglo-
Saxon charters printed by Kemble — Codex Diplomaticus
^vi Saxonici — is comprised in six volumes, the first of
which was published in 1839, the last in 1848. This work
has now, to some extent, been superseded by the Cartu-
lariicm Saxonicuin of Mr. de Gray Birch, the chief continu-
ator of Kemble. The History of La?icashire quoted, with
the date, for the second volume, of 1870, is Baines's excel-
14 INTRODUCTION
lent compilation as edited by the late John Harland, F.S.A.,
and continued and completed by Mr. Brooke Herford;
although where necessary reference is made to Croston's
edition, 1888-93. Ormerod's monumental History of
Cheshire, first published in 181 9, was reissued in a revised
form in 1882 by Mr. Helsby. Mr. Beamont's Domesday
Cheshire and Lancashire should be mentioned in conjunc-
tion with Colonel James's Domesday Facsimile of those two
counties. The Publications of the Chetham Society, the
Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (which printed
the collection of Lancashire and Cheshire documents in the
Public Record Office edited by Mr. W. D. Selby, author of
the vade-mecum of record searchers, Thejiibilee Date Book),
the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, the
Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, the Lan-
cashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, and the Chester
Architectural, Archaeological, and Historic Society of course
provide splendid raw material for the student of Lancashire
and Cheshire place-names, although here and there a paper
with a not unpromising title, and by a well-known scholar,
may, upon investigation, prove to be disappointing, as,
for instance. Dr. Latham's essay ' On the Language of
Lancashire under the Romans,' in vol. ix. (1857) of the
Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic
Society.
My indebtedness for miscellaneous information to the
above-mentioned and various other works (including the
valuable treatises of the Rev. Canon Taylor), and to local
antiquaries, is duly recorded in the proper place, and
a bibliography is appended; but I should specially men-
tion some MS. notes which Prof. Skeat, author of the
much-used Etymological Dictionary, kindly placed at my
disposal.
INTRODUCTION 15
Unfortunately, the aforesaid student of predial names in
Lancashire and Cheshire cannot avail himself of a record
which the topographic investigator in most other English
counties can study with profit, viz., the Rotuli Hundredorum,
or Hundred Rolls {tevip. Hen. HI. and Edw. I.), which
contain no extract relative to the Counties Palatine of Lan-
caster and Chester.
BRIEF GLOSSARY OF SOME OF THE CHIEF
ENGLISH PLACE-NAME COMPONENTS.
{Compiled with special reference to the Liverpool District.)
Ac
ACK
AlG
AlK ^
Acre \
A(c)ker/
As-t
Bar
Bold, Bootle
Borough
Burgh
Bury
Bur
By
Carl (Eastern and
Northern, i.e.,
Angl. and Dan.)
Chakl (Southern)
Chorl (Midland)
Caster (Angl. and
Dan.)
Cester
Chester
Dale
Del-l
Ea )
Ey J
Gars
Gat-e
A. -Sax. ac, oak.
Sax.
Graf (prefix)"!
Grave |-
Greve J
Hal(l)-e
Ham
A. -Sax. cEcer, field, acre.
A-Sax. edst, east.
A. -Sax. here, barley.
A. -Sax. bold, botl, dwelling.
(i) A. -Sax. biirh, burg, Scand. borg, fortified
place, castle, city ; (2) A. -Sax. beorh, beorg,
hill.
A. -Sax. bAr (boor), one of the lowest class of
freemen, a husbandman ; also a bower.
O. Nor. bczr. byr {Y>d^r\.-l^ot\\. and Swed. by),
settlement, farmstead, village.
A. -Sax, carl (Scand. karl), ceorl (churl), one of
! the lowest class of freemen, a husi)andman. (A
I slave was a theo-o or a thnil, whence the
surnames Thew and Thrale).
Lat. castra (pi. of caslruin), camp ; whence
A. -Sax. ceaster, city.
(i) A-Sax. dcBl, Scand. dal, dale; (2) A.-Sax.
dtel, Scand. del, deal, allotment,
(i) A.-Sax. ig (ly), O. Nor. ey, island, low
riparian tract ; (2) A.-Sax. ed, O. Nor. a, river.
A.-Sax. gcers, grass,
(l) A.-Sax. geat, gate, passage, road ; (2) A.-Sax.
gdt, goat.
(i) A.-Sax. qraf, gxo\& ; (2) A.-Sax. grce/, O. Nor.
grof (Dan. grav, Swed. graf), trench, ditch.
(i) A.-Sax. heath, O. Nor. hall{r), slope, hill,
corner ; (2) A.-Sax. heatl, hall,
(i) A.-Sax. hdin, home; (2) A.-Sax. ham{m),
piece of land, often hemmed in by the bend of
a river.
i8
GLOSSARY OF PLACE-NAME COMPONENTS
Har
Hard
Haigh
Hay
HOGH
Hoo
Hough
HOLM-E
HULME
Holt
Hurst
Ing
Kirk
Nether
Over
Pool
POUL
SCOUGH
Shaw
Shot
Stan
Stead
-x-teth
SUT
Thing
Thorpe)
Trop /
(i) A. -Sax. kara, Scand. /lare, hare (combined
with grove, wood, field, ley, etc.); (2) A.-Sax. Adr,
O. Nor. Aarr, grey ; (3) O. Nor. /lar, high ;
(4)? A. Sax. kere, O. Nor. /lerr, military.
A.-Sax. heorde, herd ; occasionally A. Sax. per-
sonal name Heard = brave.
A.-Sax. hege, haga, hedge, enclosure.
A.-Sax. ho, hSh, hough, heel
formed like a heel.
point of land
Nor. holm, river-island, low
A.-Sax, and O.
riparian land.
A.-Sax. holt, copse, wood.
A.-Sax. hyrst, copse, wood.
A.-Sax. suffix denoting 'son of,' in pi. 'descend-
ants of.'
O. Nor. kirkja (Dan. -Norw. kirke, Swed. kyrka),
A.-Sax. circe, church.
A.-Sax. ledh, meadow, pasture.
A. -Sax. hl(£W, (burial) mound, hill.
O. Nor, niel[r), sandhill, sandbank.
O. Nor. ties (Dan. -Norw. ties, Swed. tids),
A.-Sax. ticess, headland, promontory.
A.-Sax. tieother, lower,
(i) A.-Sax. ofer, upper ; (2) A.-Sax. 6fer, bank,
shore.
A.-Sax. p6l, O. Nor. poll{r), pool.
O.-Nor. sk6gr (Swed. skog, Dan. -Norw. skov),
A.-Sax. sceaga, 'grove,' 'wood.'
A.-Sax. sceot, scedf, angle or corner (of land), field ;
sometimes corruption of A.-Sax. s-holt, the s
being the genitive or possessive suffix of the first
element of the name ; holt = wood.
A.-Sax. Stan, stone, rock ; castle. Bosworth and
Toller {A.-Sax. Dict.)have collected the follow-
ing significations of stdn : i. stone as a material,
ii. a stone, iia. a stone for building, iib. a stone,
natural or wrought, serving as a mark, iic. an
image of stone, iid. a stone to which worship
is paid, iie. a stone containing metal, iif. a
precious stone, iig. stone (med.), iii. a rock.
O. Nor. sta(h{r), A.-Sax. stede, place.
A.-Sax. siith, south.
O. Nor. thittg, council, parliament.
O. Nor. thorp, farm, hamlet, village.
GLOSSARY OF PLACE-NAME COMPONENTS
19
Thwaite
Ton
Wal (prefix)
Wall (suffix)
War
WlCH\
WlCKJ
WORTH-Y
O. Nor. tkveit, piece of land, clearing.
A. -Sax. tiSn, enclosure, farmstead, manor, village ;
mod. town. (Also found in Icelandic.)
(i) A.-Sax w^fl//, wall; (2) A. -Sax. twa/^/, forest,
wood.
O. Nor. vollr, field.
Most commonly prob. A. -Sax. 7ver {O. Nor. ver
or vorr), weir, dam ; fishing-place ; (?) landing-
place.
(i) A. -Sax. zvic, habitation, station, creek, bay;
(2) O. Nor. vik, creek, bay.
A. -Sax. weorihig, farmstead, estate.
DOMESDAY ENTRIES.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY.
Domesday.
Achetun
Acrer
Alretune
Bartune
Eoltelai
Chenulveslei
Cherchebi
Chirchedele
Cildeuuelle
Crosebi
Daltone
Derbei
Einulvesdel
Erengermeles
Esmedune
Fornebei
Herleshala \
Heleshale j
Hinne
Hitune
Holland
Holand
Latune
Leiate
Modern.
Aughton.
Altcar.
AUerton.
Barton.
Bootle.
Knowsley.
Kirkby.
Kirkdale.
Childwall.
Crosby.
Dalton.
(West) Derby. 1
Ainsdale.
Ravensmeols. [pool.
Smithdown (Lane), Liver-
Formby.
Halsall.
Ince (Blundell)
Huyton.
(Up) Holland.
(Down) Holland.
Lathom.
Lydiate.
^ Domesday records that there belonged to the manor of Derbei six
berewicks, or subordinate manors, which it does not specify. These
are presumed to have been Litherpool or Liverpool, Everton, Thing-
wall, Garston, part of Wavertree, and Great Crosby.
DOMESDA Y ENTRIES
21
Domesday. Modern.
Liderlant )
Literland )
Litherland.
Magele
Maghull.
Mele
(North) Meols.
Melinge
Melling.
Marsha
Mersey.
Neweton
Newton.
Otegrimele
\ Orr^ll
Otringemele j --—
Rabil
Roby.
Sextone
Sefton.
Schelmeresdele Skelmersdale.
Spec
Speke.
Stochestede
Toxteth.
Torboc
Tarbock.
Torentun
Thornton.
Ulventune
Woolton.
Uvetone
Waletone
Walton (on-the-Hill)
Walintune
AVarrington,
Wavretreu
Wavertree.
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL.
Domesday. Modern.
Bernestone
Barnston.
Blachehol
Blacon.
Calders
Caldy.
Capeles
Capenhurst.
Chenoterie
Noctorum.
Crostone
Croughton.
Estham
Kastham.
Eswelle
Heswall.
Gaitone
Gayton.
Gravesberie
Greasby,
Haregrave
Hargrave.
Hotone
Hooton.
Landechene
Landican.
Lestone
Leighton.
Levetesham
Ledsham.
22
DOMESDA Y ENTRIES
Domesday.
Modern.
Melas
Meols.
Molintone
Mollington.
Nesse
Ness, or Nesse.
Nestone
Neston.
Optone
Upton.
Pol
(Over) Pool
Pontone
Poulton (Lancelyn).
Potintone
Puddington.
Prestune
Prenton.
Rabie
Raby.
Salhale
Saughall, Soughall.
Sotowiche
Shotwick.
Stanei
Stanney.
Stortone
Storeton.
Sudtone
Sutton.
Tinguelle
Thingwall.
Torintone
Thornton (Hough).
Turstanetone
Thurstaston.
Walea
Wallasey.
LINGUISTIC ABBREVIATIONS, Etc.
A.-S., A. -Sax.
Anglo-Saxon or Old English.
Dan.
:rz
Modern Danish.
Dan.-Norw.
=
Dano-Norwegian.
Du., Dut.
=
Dutch.
E. Eng.
=
Early English.
Fr.
=
French.
Fris.
z=
Frisian.
Gael.
=
Gaelic.
Ger.
r=
German, i.e., New High German.
Goth.
=
Gothic.
Gr.
=
Greek.
Ir.
=
Irish.
Lat.
^
Latin.
M.E., Mdle. Eng.
=:
Middle English (i2th to 15th cent.)
Mod. Eng.
=
Modern English.
Nor. Eng.
=
Northern English.
O. Eng.
=
Old English.
O. Fr.
=:
Old French.
0. Fris.
^
Old Frisian.
O. H. Ger.
=
Old High German.
O. Nor.
=
Old Norse or Icelandic.
O. Sax.
r^
Old Saxon.
Scand.
=
Scandinavian, ?.£., common to t
Scandinavian languages.
Scot.
n;
Scottish.
Swed.
rr
Swedish.
Wei.
=;
Welsh.
the
A. -Sax. and O. Nor. S, i> = th.
LIVERPOOL.
With the possible exception of London, the name of no
EngHsh town has excited so much discussion, and been the
cause of so much philological brain-cudgelling, as has that of
Liverpool. As early as the latter half of last century, the
magazines began to take up the tangled etymological thread
which had been but little more than touched in passing by
the chroniclers of the i6th and 17th centuries. At a later
period the columns of Notes and Queries were from time to
time, and are still occasionally, opened to expressions of
opmion upon this evergreen question of the origin of the
first two syllables of ' Liverpool.'
Let us glance at the earliest recorded spellings of the
name. The most ancient deed in which it is found belongs
to the time of Richard I (11 89-1 199): the form here is
Leverpol. In King John's charter, 1207, we have Liver-
pul ;^ in that of Henry III., 1229, Levereptil ; but in the
Testa de Nevill (fol. 371), in a part which bears distinct
evidence of having been written in the reign of King John,
we find the form Litherpol. An analysis which I have made
of the spellings of the name of the city in 36 of the earliest
(13th cent.) Moore charters and deeds relating to Liver-
pool- gives the following result Leverpol 1, Liverpiil i,
Liverpo/ 2, Liverpool 8, while Lyverpol occurs no fewer
' Livcrpiil K also the spelling in the Pipe Roll of 10 John (1209),
membrane 10.
- The Moore Charters and Documents Relating to Liverpool :
Report to the Finance and Estate Committee of the City Council ;
Part I., by Sir J. A. Picton, 1889. I am indebted for a copy of this
first part of the Report (the only part so far printed) to Mr. T. N.
Morton, Clerk of the Records, Liverpool.
LIVERPOOL 25
than 2)2) times. In the State records of the early part of
the succeeding century the speUings are almost uniformly
with V. Thus in the Close Rolls we have the following
forms : 1314, Lyverpol ; 1323 and 1328, Liverpol. In the
Open Rolls: 1330, Liverpool (as to-day); 1333, Liver-
pull dind Liverpole ; xTyTi"], Leverpol. In Rymer's Foedera :
1323, Liverpol; 1327, Lyverpol ; 1336, Liverpull. And
the V form continued to be by far the more usual until the
name definitively settled down into its present spelling ;
among the most notable exceptions to the v rule (apart from
the instance already mentioned) being the Letherpole of the
Ministers' Accounts, Duchy of Lancaster, 1509 •} the Lither-
pole of the Calendar to Pleadings, Duchy of Lancaster, i.
183 (1547) ; the Litherpole and Z///^^^C(?/6' of Camden ;- the
Litherpoole of a miscellaneous record of the Duchy of
Lancaster, dated 1640-41 f and the Litherpool oi Baxter. ■*
For Camden's "in Saxon Liferpole" there is not the
slightest authority, the earliest existing document in which
the name occurs belonging, as we have seen, to the end of
the 1 2th century, although there is little doubt that Lither-
pool or Liverpool was one of the six unspecified berewicks
mentioned in Domesday as being attached to the manor of
^ Selby's Lane, and Chesh. Records Preserved in the Public Record
Office, London (Lane, and Chesh. Record Soc), 1882-83, i. 100.
- In the first edition of Camden's Britannia (1586, p. 429) the
passage relative to Liverpool ran : ". . . ubi Litherpole floret, vulg6
Lirpole, a diffusa paludis in modum aqua, ut opinio est, nominatus,
qui commodissimus et usitatissimus est in Hyberniam traiectus,
elegatia et frequentia, quam antiquitate celebrior." In the edition of
1607 (p. 612) this paragraph is modified as follows : " . . . ubi Lither-
poole patet, .Saxonice Liferpole, vulgo Lirpoole," etc. Gibson's trans-
lation (17/2, ii. 146) runs "... Liverpool, in Saxon Liferpole,
commonly Lirpool ; so called (as it is thought) from the water spread
there like a fen. It is the most convenient and usual place for setting
sail into Ireland, but not so eminent for antiquity as for neatness and
populousness." Gough translated it (1789, iii. 12S) : "... Lither-
poole, Saxon Liferpole, commonly called Lirpoole, from a water
extended like a pool, according to the common opinion, where is the
most convenient and most frequented passage to Ireland ; a town more
famous for its beauty and populousness than its antiquity."
^ Selby's Lane, and Chesh. Records, etc., i. 33.
■* Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum, 2nd ed., 1733, p. 213 : —
"... hodiernum vero loco nomen Lither-pool est, sive Pigra palus''
(The present name is really derived from the situation — Litherpool or
' sluggish water ').
26 LIVERPOOL
West Derby (Derbei). Of the other i6th century chroniclers
Harrison has :^ " Lirepook, or as it was called of old,
Liverpoole haven " ; and Leland -?■ " Lyrpole alias Lyver-
poole."
Notwithstanding the much greater frequency of the
spelling with v compared with that with th (the forms
without either are, of course, merely slurred renderings of
the proper name), it is impossible to say with certainty, from
the available historical evidence, whether the original form
of the name of the city had liver or lever,^ lither or lether ;
but the contiguity of Litherland would almost seem to
indicate that the spelling with /// was the primitive one.
In an article in the Supplement to the Lady's Magazine
for 1774 (p. 676), it is asserted that "the right spelling" of
the name of the Mersey port " is ' Leverpool ' " ; but the
article is simply based on Enfield's ' I>everpool,'^ which was
published in that year. Enfield offers no definite etymology
of the name ; he merely refers (chap. I.) to the hypothetical
derivations from the fabulous liver bird, or the seaweed
liver, or the Lever family, without manifesting a preference
for any one of them. In the Gentlemari s Magazine,
vol. Ixxxvii. (1817), pt. ii., p. 508, Mr. W. R. Whatton, of
Manchester, traces the etymology to a conjectural A.-Sax.
Lifiepul, which he translates as ' still or quiet lake ' ; and
the elder Baines'' seemed inclined to agree with his coadjutor
hereon. But the A.-Sax. /?«<' is the Mod. Eng. ' lithe,' which
would give ' Lithe-pool,' instead of Litherpool.
Enfield's successor, Troughton, experienced not the least
difficulty in fixing the etymology of ' Liverpool ' — or ' Lither-
pool,' as he preferred to spell the name. "The word iither,^'
he says,*^ " signifies lower. Litherpool means Lower Pool.
Hence the name of the village Litherland, or ' Lower Land ' ;
and of a passage, yet called Litherland Alley, in the neigh-
1 Holinshed's Chronicles, Hooker's ed., 1587, i. 84^.
* Itinerary, Ilearne's 2nd ed., 1744, vii. 44.
^ The student should not overlook the correspondence entitled
" Leverpool or Liverpool ?" which was initiated in the Liverpool Courier
on June 7, 1889, by Mr. Ellis Lever.
'' An Essay towards the History of Leverpool, based on Mr. George
Perry's papers, by William Enfield, 1774.
^ Hist, of Lancashire, 1836, iiii. 55.
^ Hist, of Liverpool, 18 10, p. 20.
LIVERPOOL 27
bourhood of Pool Lane." The A. -Sax. word for ' lower,'
however, is neothor, ' nether.'
The younger Baines worked on somewhat different lin-
guistic lines. He was inclined to think that the Z/der and
Zt'fer of Domesday,^ the Ze7'er of the reign of Richard T.,
the Lt'f/ier of Testa de Nevill, etc., were " all originally the
same word, and that they are derived, as has been suggested,
from the old Gothic word h'de or /if/ie, the sea, or from
some of the words formed from it : as /id and /ifer, ' a ship ';
////le, 'a fleet of ships'; lithesnian, *a seaman.'"- But, as
Professor Skeat points out, Gothic has no such word as
liiSe or lithe, and it does not mean ' the sea ' in Anglo-
Saxon. It is an adjective, and signifies * gentle ' — Mod.
Eng. lithe, 'pliant.' Lid, ' a ship,' is from a different root,
and has nothing to do with it.
The latest historian of Liverpool, Sir J. A. Picton, found
the question altogether too knotty for solution, although he
possessed infinitely greater philological knowledge than
any of the preceding historians of Liverpool. " The name
of Liverpool," he observes, " is even more enigmatical than
the seal, and has hitherto baffled all investigators in
endeavouring satisfactorily to account for its origin. That
the name was originally applied to the water rather than to
the land appears to be agreed upon all hands. The
embouchure of the small stream was called the Pool down
to the time of the formation of the Old Dock."^ Sir James
afterwards pointed out that the notion of giving the name
liver to a bird (which constitutes the popular etymology) was
quite unauthorized, the symbolic Liverpool bird being
originally the Eagle of St. John. On this point Dr. Colling-
wood wrote, over thirty years ago : " In both the ancient
and the modern seal [of Liverpool] we have a bird which
has neither the long legs of a heron nor the long neck of a
liver (?), but is as good a representation of a dove bearing
an olive branch as we could expect to see in such a situa-
^ This refers to Litherland, there being (as already stated) no men-
tion of Liverpool in Domesday, except that the Esmedune of that
Survey is assumed to have been the name of a hamlet situate in or near
the present Smithdown Lane, Liverpool.
- Hist, of Liverpool, 1852, p. 58.
' Memorials of Liverpool, 1875, i- 40*
28 LIVERPOOL
tion. The etymology of the name of Leverpool, or Liver-
pool, is doubtless topographical rather than heraldic or
armorial."^
Now let us note the most recent expert opinion upon the
question of the etymology of ' Liverpool'
In A^ofes and Queries, February 29, 1896, p. 173, Pro-
fessor Skeat writes : "... we see that the name /h'er was
certainly applied to some kinds of the iris and the bulrush
which grew in pools, whence it appears that liver-pool meant
originally neither more nor less than ' a pool in which
livers grew,' meaning by h'ver some kind of waterflag or
bulrush."
To this Canon Taylor replied {Notes and Queries, March
21, 1896, p. 233): "Professor Skeat concludes that the
liver in Liverpool, Livermere, and Liversedge denotes some
kind of iris, waterflag, or bulrush, which grew in pools or
meres. An obvious difficulty is that while the mere at
Livermere was a freshwater mere in which waterflags or
bulrushes might grow, the pool at Liverpool is [Canon
Taylor was evidently unaware that the pool is filled up] a
saltwater pool, in which no such growths are possible."
The Canon adds that the meaning of ' Litherland ' would
throw light on the signification of ' Litherpool ' or ' Liver-
pool.'
But Professor Skeat had already (March 4) written to me
as follows : "I am aware that some documents have
Lither . . . ; but if that is right the name also makes
perfect sense as it stands, being the O. Eng. lither, an
extremely common word, meaning ' bad,' and so ' dirty ' or
'disagreeable.' Shakespeare uses it in the sense of 'stagnant'
or ' sluggish,' as applied to the air, in a passage explained
by me some years ago " (i Hen. VL 4, 7, 21). And again
(March 9) he wrote : " It \litJier or any of its dialectic
variations] is used all sorts of ways. Thus lether sti is ' a
bad road.' I see no great difficulty over lither-pooiy
We have already observed that Baxter explained Lither-
pool as Pigra palus, or 'sluggish water.' Lither is, more-
^ The Historical Fauna of Lancashire and Cheshire, Proceedings
Lit. and Phil. Soc. Liverpool, vol. xviii. (1863-64), p. 170.
LIVERPOOL 29
over, well known as a Northern dialect-word, meaning
' sluggish,' ' idle,' ' lazy.'^
If, however, we were to accept Professor Skeat's theory
of a ' dirty pool,' what are we to say of ' Litherland '
(Domesday Liderlant and Literland) ? I can scarcely think
that it was ever intended to designate this particular district
' bad land.' We must, too, pass by the would-be derivation
from a hypothetical Celtic Llyrptull (Welsh llyr, ' brink,'
'shore,' 'sea'). The A.-Sax. piil (O. Nor. pollr), 'pool,'
is admittedly from the Cymric ptvU^ as a general thing ; but
it clearly does not follow that Liverpool is necessarily of
Welsh origin. Besides, pwll in Welsh bi-elemental place-
names, in accordance with the genius of the language, is
invariably a prefix, as in ' Pwllheli '; and, furthermore, while
(as we have observed) ' Liverpool ' or ' Litherpool ' can be
slurred into Lirpool, it is hardly conceivable that Llyrpwll
could be extended into ' Liverpool ' or ' Litherpool.'
It would seem that we must rather look to the Teutonic
lilith, ' a slope,' to supply the much-sought-for etymology.
This word is cognate with Lat. clivus^ ' a gentle ascent,'
which exactly tallies with the physiography of Litherland,
and the course of the old Pool. It is, however, somewhat
doubtful whether the A.-Sax. hlith or the O. Nor. hlWi was
the original etymon. Were we to accept the former, it
would be necessary to assume that the er constituting the
second syllable of ' Litherpool ' and ' Litherland ' was a
phonetic intrusion, owing to the difficult vocal combination
presented by thp. This is, perhaps, a rather unusual assump-
tion with respect to a place-name ; but we are not altogether
without historical evidence for such reasoning. Kemble
says,'"^ referring to the common Anglo-Saxon legal terms,
and those relating to custom^and usages occurring in
charters : " The Normans could not even spell the words,
hence they write griderbryce, friderbryce, ior grihbryce [breach
of covenant], fri^bryce [breach of peace], their own contrac-
tion for der bearing a distant resemblance to the Saxon S
' Lither is glossed 'idle,' 'lazy,' in both the Lancashire Glossary
(1875-S2) and the Cheshire Glossary (18S4-S6) of the English Dialect
Society, as well as in Sir J. A. Picton's South Lancashire Dialect,
Proceedings Lit. and Phil. Soc. Liverpool, vol. xix. (1864-65), p. 35.
* Codex Diplumaticus, i. xliii.
30 LIVERPOOL
\dhox //;]."! ^This is ^'exactly what may have? happened
in the case of Litherland, which in Domesday is spelled
Liderlant and Literland^ and later, Litterland^ owing to the
difficulty experienced by the Norman French in the articu-
lation of the th or dh sound — th as in ' thank,' dh as in
' then.'
On the other hand, if we accept the Norse hlitJi^ which
figures in various Scandinavian place-names, there is no
necessity to assume a phonetic intrusion, because the genit.
sing, case of the word in that language is hlithar, compared
with hlithes in Anglo-Saxon. In Old Norse we find hlithar-
brun, ' the edge of a slope,' hlithar-fotr, ' the foot of a slope,'
so that there would not be much difficulty about hlithar-
la}id, ' the land of the slope ' or ' the slope land,' and
hlithar-pollr^ ' the pool of the slope ' — in fact, Hliiharldtid
{lofid, pi. of land) occurs in the Icelandic record, the
Landnamabok.- It is scarcely necessary to point out that
the Norse element in the vicinity of Liverpool was very
strong ; and the appropriation of creeks and sea-pools, and
of land adjacent to the coast, was a well-known character-
istic of the ancient Norwegians and Danes, as, indeed, the
name Vik-\ng implies. It should be mentioned that this
derivation from the Old Norse is that which recommends
itself both to the Lecturer in Icelandic in University
College, Liverpool (Rev. J. Sephton), and to the Professor
of Latin in that institution (Dr. Strong).
It only remains to account for the presumed transition
from the th to the v sound in the case of Liverpool. This
is a very simple matter. Max Miiller published'^ a diagram
showing how easily ih was changed into / or v, and quoted
a well-known German authority^ in reference hereto. Dr.
^ As to intrusive r see Skeat's Notes on English Etymology, s.v.
listre, Transactions Philological Soc, 1885-86, pp. I sqq. ; also a
paper by Dr. Stock on the Influence of Analogy as Explaining Certain
Examples of Unoriginal / and r ; ibid. pp. 260 sqq. ; and compare
Nidderdale, i.e., the dale of the River Nidd.
2 Compare also Lithar-fylki {fylki =folk), mentioned in the 12th
cent. Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, lib. v., which place is
identified by Holder (Saxonis Grammatici Gesta Danorum, ed. 1886,
p. 702) with Lier, near Drammen, in Norway.
■* Science of Language, 2nd ser., 1864, p. 175.
^ Arendt, Beitrage zur Vergleichenden Sprachforschung, i. 425.
LIVERPOOL 31
Morris wrote •} "The spirants interchange with one another :
f=th. Children often S3.y fu/nd for ' thumb.' Cf. 'dwarf,'
Mdle. Eng. dwerth and dwerg=0. Eng. tkiueorh ; Russian
Fedor = Theodore." With the uneducated Londoners, too,
th=f ox V ('with' is pronounced wiv), and this is attri-
butable to Norman-French influence. We have also such
instances as that supplied in ' The Carved Stones of Islay,'
where Mr. R. C. Graham refers to a slab with the inscrip-
tion, "John Heves, marchand in lever [leather], 1702.''
The cognate form in Latin {clivus) of Teutonic hlith has
already been noted
The reason why ' Litherland ' did not suffer the mutation
with ' Litherpool ' is, I think, sufficiently obvious. Lither-
land, until comparatively recent times, has been a remote
and secluded village. Liverpool, as a seaport, after King
John developed an interest in it, became more and more
subject to extraneous and distracting influences. On the
same principle the Icelanders have, by their isolation, pre-
served the language of their Norse ancestors almost intact,
while their brethren, the inhabitants of easily-accessible
Scandinavia, have broken it up into modern Norwegian,
Danish, and Swedish.
^ Historical English Grammar, 1875, p. 44.
THE PLACE-NAMES OF THE
LIVERPOOL DISTRICT,
L— HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY.
Abram. — This name affords a curious instance of what
some philologists term 'folk assimilation.' The ancient
designation was Edbiirgham or Adbi/ri^ha/n} The place
was therefore originally the ham or home of a Saxon pro-
prietress named Eadburh {durh being a termination of
feminine names only).
Aigburth. — The name of the headquarters of the
Liverpool Cricket Club represents ' the place of the oaks ' —
A. -Sax. dc, 'oak,' combined with a derivative of beran,
'to bear,' 'to produce.' In the Ministers' Accounts of
Whalley Monastery, 28-29 Henry VHI. (1537-1538), Lane,
and Chesh. Rec'd Soc, vol. vii., 1S82, we have the spelling
Ackeberth.
Ainsdale. — The Domesday Ei?i2dv€sdel^ and the sub-
sequent variations of that name, all imply ' the dale-land
(A.-Sax. did) belonging to Einulph or Eanulf,' which was
a fairly common Saxon name, contracted from Earnwulf,
that is, Eagle-Wolf.
Aintree. — The name of this famous racing resort,
the Rev. Ed. Powell, of Lydiate — who has devoted much
time to the study of old deeds relating to the Orms-
kirk district — informs me, is nearly always spelled Aintree
^ Chancery Rolls, 7 Henry IV. (1406), membrane 6 ; Lane, and
Chesh Rec'd Soc, vol. viii., 1883.
3
34 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
or Ayntree^ in ancient documents ; and as to this day there
is a conspicuous absence of large plant-hfe in the district
there seems no reason to doubt that Aintree (A.-Sax.
dH'trebiv) means simply ' One Tree.' In fact, upon this
very point Professor Skeat writes to me : " We have ' Ain-
sty,' single or one path (narrow path for one) ; and I know
a ' One-Tree Hill ' myself."
AUerton. — This is a common English place-name,
meaning ' the alder enclosure or farmstead ' — A.-Sax.
air, ' alder,' combined with the usual ti'in. The Allerton of
the West Derby Hundred occurs in Domesday as Alretiine.
Alt.— The name of this stream has a certain Teutonic
appearance, alt being modern German for 'old' — A.-Sax.
eald?' Alt is the name of a river in Central Europe, and
it has an alternative appellation, Aluta, which might recall
the A.-Sax. alutan, ' to bend,' or aledt, ' bent down,' with
reference to the peculiar and decided way in which the
Lancashire Alt bends downwards or southwards where it
approaches its embouchure. But there can be no doubt
that, as in the case of so many river-names in England,
' Alt ' must be referred, like ' Douglas ' (black water), the
name of a neighbouring river, and ' Gowy ' (Welsh gwy, or
wy, ' water '), a river at the southern end of the Wirral pen-
insula, as well as 'Dee,' to Celtic sources — in this instance
to the Gael, alt, ' a stream ' (altd?i, ' a streamlet '), a name
which, naturally generally combined with an adjective-suffix,
occurs frequently in Gaelic-speaking districts.
Altcar, near Formby, is enclosed on three sides by
the waters of the Alt and its affluents ; and car is a common
word in this part of Lancashire for ' moss-land ' — Mdle. Eng.
car or ker, O. Nor. ktarr, SBwed. kiirr, ' marshy ground.'
Baincs ('Lane.,' 1870, ii. 405) says: "Altcar seems to be
the Domesday Acrcr, half a carucate of waste land held by
Uctred ; but no other mention is made of this place until
21 Edward L (1293), when an action was tried between the
King and the Abbot of Mira Vallis, or Merivale, as to the
right of the latter to one carucate of land in Altekar . . .
1 Ayntre occurs in the Nonarum Inquisitiones {temp. Edw. III.)
fol. 40^
- The Scandinavian lan£juap;es differ from the Germanic in retain-
ing a different root for ' old ' — O. Nor. gaiiiall.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 35
As appears from several maps, a hamlet called Altmouth
formerly existed at the mouth of the River Alt ; and it is
supposed to have been overwhelmed by inroads of sand,
similar to those which drove the inhabitants of Formby to
remove their church and village inland. 'l"he remains of
houses have been found buried in the sand immediately
contiguous to the railway station, Hightown, which is on
the site assigned to Altmouth in the township of Ince."
Anfleld. — A part of Everton, originally Plangfield, or
Hanging-fields, in allusion to the deeply sloping or hanging
nature of the ground. Syers says :^ " In the 3rd Henry VH.
anno 1488, an inquisition was taken at Walton, which shows
that the boundary of the south part of Walton, ' beginning
at Carton Cross, and following to Darling Dale, and to the
cast end thereof, and so over the Breck, by an ancient
ditch on the lands of Everton, called Ilangfield, on the south
part of the common of pasture of Walton,' " etc. He adds :
" All the lands of Everton were known by the names of
Hangfield, Whitefield, and Netherfield "; and he then
appends a footnote : " This word [Hangfield] is frequently
written ' Hongfield,' and by some writers ' Honghfield.'
I prefer Hangfield, that name being derived from ' hanging,
or sloping field.' To strengthen the propriety of my ortho-
graphy in this particular instance, it may be as well to state
that in Gore's paper of 26th July, 1810, certain fields of
Walton are advertised as follows : ' Fields in ^Valton-on-
the-Hill, called Hanging-fields.' "
Arbury. — The Testa de Nevill has Herbury (fol. 396)
and Herelmr (fol. 398''), which is exactly how a Norman
scribe would write down the spoken ' Arbury ' ; so we must
consider the h in the Testa to be intrusive or unoriginal.
It is difficult, without evidence of Saxon spelling, to give
the meaning of Ar with anything approaching certainty.
I do not favour A. -Sax. (crra., 'old,' but rather think that
Arbury was perhaps originally a simple earth-fortification —
A. -Sax. eorth-lmrh {cf. A.-Sax. //twV// = Mod. Eng. 'hearth');
and this derivation would seem to be confirmed by the form
Erdluiry, which is found in a Duchy of Lancaster document
of 18 Henry VII. (1502-3).
^ Hist, of Everton, 1830, p. 19.
36 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Atherton. — This place occurs in the Testa de Nevill
(fols. 396, sgS*", and 408) as Aderfo?i. d and 'S (th), it
is well known, were constantly interchangeable in Early
English : the word ' gather ' is from the A.-Sax. gaderia?i,
while ' murder ' is from A.-Sax. mortJior. A small stream,
which at one point expands into a pool, runs through the
township, and there seems no reason to doubt that Atherton
is an equivalent of Broughton or Brocton, the iihi or farm-
stead by the brook, and is derived, as to its first element,
from the A.-Sax. ddre (compare Swed. dder), ' fountain,'
'watercourse.' It is true that Bosworth ('A.-Sax. Diet.,'
1838), on the authority of Lye(' Diet. Sax., etc.,' Manning's
ed., 1772), gave isf/ier as meaning *a field,' which would
make Atherton a synonym of Felton, the ///« on an open
field or plain ; but Lye took txf/ier from ^.Ifric's 'Colloquy,'
where it is glossed ager (field), while later vocabularists
declare ather, as it there occurs, to be a mistake for oicer,
* field.' Thus Wiilcker, editing Wright,^ prints cecer in the
' Colloquy,' and adds a note : " The MS. reads distinctly
cether, which is no doubt an error for cEcer."
Aughton. — Aughton, or Aghioft, as the name was
spelled in the reign of Edward II. (1307-1327), might at
first sight appear to be referable to the Gael, auch and the
Ir. ag/i, augh {ac/tad/i), ' field '; but seeing that the spelling
Acton occurs in the times of John and Henry III. (1199-
1272), and bearing in mind that the ch in the Domesday
Achctun (as our Aughton figures in the Norman Survey)
generally represents hard c (k), it seems but reasonable to
assume that Aughton was simply ' the oak farmstead,'^
A.-Sax. dc, ' oak' — ^just as the Aughton in Yorkshire was.
Bamfurlong, the name of a village near Wigan, is
literally ' the tree furrow-length' — A.-Sax. beam {Ger. baum),
'tree'; furh, ' furrow '; /a?ig, ' long.' A furlang, or furlong,
appears to have originally been a square as well as a long
measure, "having," says Kemble," "determinate length and
width, and forming a fixed portion of an acre."
^ Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, 2nd ed., 1884, p. 90.
- It should, however, be mentioned that the spelling Asshton occurs
in the Survey of 1320-1346, Chetham Soc, vol. Ixxiv., 1868. The
ash was the favourite tree of the Anglo-Saxons.
^ Codex Diplomaticus, iii. xxv. iSut see footnote p. 45.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 37
Bankhall. — Bank Hall, close to the l/ank of the
Mersey, was long the residence of the ancient Liverpool
family of More or Moore. No trace of the mansion now
remains.
Barton. — Domesday spelling Bartune. Barton is a
very common English place-name, derived from the A. -Sax.
bere-tun, ' barley yard,' ' grange. ' It is distinct from Burton,
which see in the Wirral Section.
Bedford. — The name of this township does not occur
in the earliest extant records ; it is not mentioned in
Domesday or the Testa de Nevill. It seems, however, to
have formerly been spelt Bcdefoni ; and the original appel-
lation may have been identical with that of the like-named
Midland county town, which meant ' the ford of Bedica,'
the sequence in Anglo-Saxon deeds relating to this impor-
tant place being briefly : Bcdicatiford {Bedican, genit. sing.
of the personal name Bedica), Bedanford, Bedeford. Or the
Lancashire Bedford may originally have simply been Bedan-
ford, ' the ford of Beda.'
BickerstafiPe. — The earliest recorded spelling of this
name, Bikersiat, seems to be in the Testa de Nevill (fol.
402*^'). In ancient Burscough MSB. Bykyrstath repeatedly
occurs, and even as late as 1517 we find Bekerstath,
although the termination staff ox staffe had apparently been
used before that date. The first portion of the name
is probably from a personal appellation, while the last
syllable must be attributable to the O. Nor. stathr (A. -Sax.
stede) ' a place.' As a personal name Biker or Bicker may
be from two sources. The O. Nor. Inkarr, ' a large drink-
ing cup,' is still with us in the Scot, bicker and the Eng.
beaker ; and Jamieson^ says that bikarr " was the term used
to denote the cup drunk by the ancient Scandinavians in
honour of their deceased heroes." But more likely the
origin of the personal appellation is to be found in the
O. Nor. byggia (Dan. bygge, Swed. bygga), ' to build,' whence
the Scot, and Nor. Eng. big or byg, ' to build,' and biggar,
' builder.'
^ Scottish Dictionary, under bicker, quoting Keysler, Antiq. Septent.,
pp. 352-354-
38 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Billinge. — This was a settlement of the Saxon BilHng
family,^ and, according to the canon now accepted, an
original, or parent, or ancestral settlement, as distinct from
the offshoot which would be imphed by a Billington or a
Billingham.
Birkdale. — On the face of it this name would simply
represent 'the dale of the birches' — O. Nor. l>idrk, 'birch,'
and Scand. dal; but as the earliest found spelling is
£reck-en-le-Dak, which occurs in a deed of 6 Edward I.
(1278)— Duchy Records— by which Sir Robt. Blundell, son
of Adam, lord of Aynosdale (Ainsdale), released certain
lands to his son, birches have apparently nothing to do
with the etymology of Birkdale. The exact meaning of the
dialect-word ' breck ' is somewhat doubtful ; it seems to
vary in different parts of the Anglian country to which it
is confined. Thus the ' Hist. Eng. Diet.' notes from
local authorities that in Norfolk and Suffolk ' breck '
signifies a large field, while in Northumberland, etc., it
represents 'a portion of a field cultivated by itself.' Some
believe that a breck was, in all Teutonic countries, originally
a piece of land that was either temporarily or permanently
idle or waste in the midst of a cultivated tract. The Mod.
Eng. equivalent apjjears to be 'brake' or 'bracken,' which
are connected with the Dan.-Norw. bregne, 'brake,' 'fern';
Dan.-Norw. brak, 'fallow'; Swed. brdken, 'brake,' 'fern';
Ger, brack, ' fallow,' etc. We should not, however, overlook
the Norse word brekka, 'a slope,' which is frequently found
in Icelandic local names and will doubtless account for some
English ' Brecks.'
Blundellsands. — This place, topographically, is prac-
tically identical with Crosby, where is the residence of
the Blundell family. " Within the last forty years," say
Baines's editors,^ " Great Crosby has very considerably
increased, having become a regular place of residence for
Liverpool merchants ; and the present proprietor of Little
Crosby has appropriated a long track of sandhills on the
coast for building purposes, under the name of Blundell-
Sands."
^ Birch's ed. (1876) of Kemble's Saxons in England, i. 458.
^ Lane, 1870, ii. 398.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 39
Bold, Bootle. — The names of these places present
no etymological difficulty. The A.-Sax. l>o/d, bolt^ botl,
meant 'house,' 'dwelling,' 'village.' In Domesday the
name of the place which is now called Bootle was spelled
Boltelai. Upon this point Prof. Skeat writes to me : " I
suppose that, in Boltelai, the boltel alone represents
' Bootle,' and the ai is a suffix." In the Testa de Nevill,
fol. 403 (for Bootle), we have the spelling Both; in a
document dated 1541 B otill occvixs. Leo's identification of
A.-Sax. boil and bold with Ger. battel} is now shown not
to be correct.
Bryn. — This Lancashire place-name has no connection
with the Wei. bryn, 'hill.' It is probably of Norman-French
origin, as Alan le Brun (O. Fr. brun, ' brown '), who is men-
tioned in the Testa de Nevill (fol. 403) as holding by
ancient tenure two bovates of land for 6s. of Henry de Lee,
Sheriff of Lancashire in 1274 and 1282, is reputed to have
given his name to Brun or Bryn Hall. The ultimate source
of Fr. brun is, however, the O. H. Ger. brun, so that the
origin is Teutonic. See Stappers's ' Diet. Synopt. d'Etymo-
logie Fran^aise,' 1894, p. 506, and compare A.-Sax. brun,
Ger, braim, ' brown.'
Burscough. — The spelling in 1 28 $ yf^s Bi/rscho7a ; in
the Survey of 1320-1346, Chetham Soc, vol. Ixxiv., 1868,
we have Burschoge. The latter element in the name is
allied to the Mdle. Eng. shaive, A.-Sax. sceaga, ' thicket,'
' small wood,' and is from the O. Nor. skbgr (Dan. skov,
Swed. skog). The first element may be from a personal
name, or it is perhaps connected with Mod. Eng. ' bur ' or
' burr'; cf. Dan. borre, 'burr,' 'burdock.' Or the grove may
have contained a bur, or bower.
Burtonwood. — Burton = A.-Sax. bur-tiin, ' the boor
farm ' ; compare Chorlton. But see the Wirral Burton.
Ohildwall. — The Domesday spelling is Cildeuuelle,
which shows that the name of this township was pronounced
at the end of the eleventh century practically as it is to-day ;
in 1259 Childwalle occurs ; in the Testa de Nevill we have
Childeivale and Childeivall. Other renderings are Chelde-
1 Die Angelsachsischen Ortsnamen (Rectitudines Singularum
Personarum), Halle, 1S42, p. 36.
40 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
zvell, Chidewell, Chidwall {i62:\), Chilwell {i']6o), and even
Kydeivell. The second syllable is homonymous with the
-walloi 'Thingwair — O. Nor. w//r(dat. sing, velli), 'field';
and we have the O. Nor. kelda (Dan. kilde, Swed. kdlla,
Nor. Eng. keld), ' well,' ' spring.' The Mod. Eng. equi-
valent of Childwall is therefore ' Wellfield ' or ' Springfield.'
Chowbent derives its name from a bent (A. -Sax.
beofiet), or common, which was owned by one Chew or
Chow.^
Croft. — A.-Sax., 'a small farm.'
Cronton. — The name of this place occurs in the
Testa de Nevill as Grohinton (fol. 396''), and as Crohmton
(fol. 398^)^; but in 1562 we find a spelling — Crawenton —
which (unless we have here the inevitable personal appella-
tion) would imply that the original Saxon iihi, or farmstead,
received its designation from a settlement of crows — A.-Sax.
crawe (pi. crdwan), 'a crow.'^
Crosby. — The name of this Norse settlement was
spelled Crosebi in Domesday, Crosshy in the Testa de Nevill ;
and by 1645 it had reached its present stage (Crosby). This
was 'the hamlet of the (stone) cross' — O. Nor. kross^ com-
bined with O. Nor. bj'r, Scand. by, ' village,' ' town.' It is
recorded in Baines ('Lane.,' 1870, ii. 396) that "An ancient
cross stands in Little Crosby. This was formerly the object
of a pleasing village festival called ' The Flowering of the
Cross.' Mr. Nicholas Blundell, in an unpublished diary of
the first quarter of last century, makes annual mention of it,
as having attended it with his family."
Crossens. — The earliest forms of the name, viz.,
^ Unpublished MS. Notes of Doming Rasbotham, written 1787 ;
Baines, Lane, 1870, ii. 202.
^ This difference in the initial letter is not here of much significance :
the Romans at one time did not distinguish between the sound of C (k)
and G hard ; but eventually the necessity of discrimination became
evident, and G was formed by slightly modifying C. See the author's
essay, ' A Fascinating Science,' in the Educational Times, January,
1896, p. 35 ; and, for the vagaries of G in another tongue, his paper,
'The Humours of a Great Language — Russian,' in the lournal oj
Education, December, 1894, p. 710.
^ Crdwe forms one of the select body of onomatopoetic or imitative
words.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 41
Crossnes in the Scarisbrick deeds (thirteenth century), and
Crosnes in the Nonarum Inquisitiones, fol. 40^ {temp.
Edw. III.), point to but one etymology — O. Nor. kross,
'cross,' and ?ies, 'a ness or shp of land,' in allusion to the
comparatively elevated position occupied by the place
under discussion between Martin Mere and the estuary of
the Ribble. The Rev. W. T. Bulpit says that Archdeacon
Clarke used to argue that Crossens meant Cross Sands !
The ancient cross of the township has been succeeded by a
maypole.
Croxteth. — In 1228 we find the spelling Croxstath.
The latter element may be referred to the O. Nor. stathr
(A. -Sax. stede, Ger, stadt), ' a stead,' ' a place '; while the
first syllable is probably the O. Nor. krokr (Dan. krog,
Swed. krok), which signified (i) anything crooked, (2) a nook
or corner, (3) a personal name,^ as in the place-name
Krdksfjorthr, which would make, in Mod. Eng., Croxforth.
Cuerdley. — In the Survey of 1320-1346, Chetham Soc,
vol. Ixxiv., 1 868, we find Cuerdesleglie mentioned as one
of the members of the manor of ' Wydnesse.' The first
element is no doubt a personal name, the second being
from the common A.-Sax. leak (ley, lea), 'pasture-land.'
Culcheth. — After careful study of the evidence which
is so far available, I am unable to agree with the con-
clusion come to by many, both locally and extraneously,
that this place is the Cealchyth or Ccekhyth which is so fre-
quently mentioned in Saxon charters, and was upon various
occasions the scene of geniois, or meetings of the Supreme
Council of the Anglo-Saxons, as well as of synods of their
Church. It is true, as Mr. Robson, a local antiquary of
considerable repute, pointed out,- that one of the farm-
houses is, or was, moated round and called the ' Old Abbey ';
but I do not see how we can get behind the cold fact that
A.-Sax. Ceak-hythwiQ^.n's, ' the chalk hithe, wharf, or landing-
place,' and that there is no chalk at Culcheth, nor any river.
Besides, Bosworth^ and Thorpe,* as well as Toller,^ unite
^ Krok the Peasant (Croc Agrestis) — Saxonis Grammatici Gesta
Danorum, lib. viii., Holder's ed., i8S6.
- Baines, Lane., 1870, ii. 21S. ^ A.-Sax. Diet., 1838.
■* A.-Sax. Chronicle, 1861.
' A.-Sax. Diet. (Bosworth and Toller), almost completed.
42 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
in assigning (though Thorpe doubtfully) Cealchyth to
Challock, or Chalk, in Kent. In early post-Conquest times
Culcheth was styled Culchef, Kulchet, and Ctdchit. The
natives of the place carry apocope still further, and, we are
told, pronounce the name Kilsha. As to the etymology of
the name, if we discard the idea of the common Celtic
prefix Ml, i.e. cill (church) from Lat. cella, ' cell,' and of the
Gael, coill, ' wood,' which usually gives the prefix cut or kil
in Anglicized names,^ we may note that Cul is an Anglo-
Saxon patronymic,^ as embodied in Culingworth or Culling-
worth, while the second syllable of the name might be
referable to the A. -Sax. cete (chete), 'cottage,' ' cell.' The
form CulthetJi, occurring in the Nonarum Inquisitiones
{temp. Edw. III.), fol. 40^^, suggests, however, a possible
original A.-Sax. Ceald-hceth-, ' Cold Heath.'
OunsCOUgh. — This name occurs in the Survey of 1320-
1346, Chetham Soc, vol. Ixxiv., 1868, as Conescoughe. The
meaning is ' rabbit grove ' — Mdle. Eng. coning, cuning,
cunny, etc. (Scand. kani?i), through O. Fr. ultimately from
hat. cunicu/us, 'cony,' 'rabbit'; and the dialectic survival
of O. Nor. skogr (Swed. skog, Dan.-Norw. skov), ' grove,'
' wood.' See Hargrave in the Wirral section. The cony
or rabbit does not appear to have been introduced into
England until after the advent of the Normans.
Dallum. — ' In the dales ' — dative plural of A.-Sax. dcei,
' dale.'
Dalton, near Skelmersdale, is referred to in Domesday
as Daltone — "the farmstead in the dale " — A.-Sax. dcel-tiin.
Ditton. — The name was formerly spelled Dytlon. The
English Dittons are generally traceable to A.-Sax. D'lciiin, ' a
diked or ditched enclosure' — A.-Sax. die, masc. = 'dike,'
fern. = ' ditch.' ' Dike ' and ' ditch ' are therefore doublets.
In excavating a ditch a dike was necessarily thrown up.
The name Ditton is consequently somewhat analogous to
Walton where the latter refers to a wall or rampart and not
to a weald, wold, or wood.
Douglas. — The name of the river which flows through
Wigan, and upon the banks of which, in contiguity to that
^ Sir H. Maxwell, Scottish Land Names, 1894, p. 105.
^ Birch's ed. of Kemble's Saxons in England, 1876, i. 450.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 43
town, tradition avers that King Arthur achieved several
victories over the Saxons/ is derived from the Gael, dub/i
(doo), 'black,' and i^/aise, g/as, 'water.' "This syllable
gias,^' says Sir Herbert Maxwell,- " has two meanings ; as
an adjective it means 'green ' or 'grey' [Wei. gias, 'blue,'
' grey,' ' green '] probably cognate with the Lat. glauais ;
as a substantive it means 'a stream.' Thus Dunglas is
Gael, dim g/as, ' green hill' ; but Douglas is dud/i g/as,
' the dark stream.' " Some have argued that ' Douglas '
means ' dark green,' ' water ' or ' river ' being understood ;
but Joyce, in both his works on Irish topographic nomen-
clature,^ gives ' Douglas ' as representing ' dark or black
stream,' as above.
DownhoUand, near Altcar, occurs in Domesday as
Ho/and, wiiich is probably a corruption of the A.-Sax. /lo/t-
/aiid, ' wood-land ' (Ger. Ho/z, ' wood ') ; / between two /'s
would soon drop. There is a Holt Lane not very far from
the township, which latter acquired the later prefix ' Down '
in order to distinguish it from Upholland (near Wigan), which
lies high and contiguous to moors and woods. It was at
one time thought that the name of the Dutch kingdom
meant ' the low or hollow land ' (Dut. /lo/, A.-Sax. ho/, Ger.
/w/i/, ' hollow ') ; but a ninth century document was dis-
covered in which the spelling Ho /t/and occmxQd, and ' wood-
land ' was as naturally applicable to the country as ' low land.'
Eccleston. — A fairly common Lancashire ecclesiastical
place-name, the equivalent of 'Churchtown' — ' Eccles '
coming through Late Latin, like Fr. eg/ise, Wei. eg/tvys,
^ The fourteenth-century Monk of St. Werburgh's, Chester, Ranulf
Higden, referring to Arthur's battles with the Saxons, says (Poly-
chronicon, lil>. v.) there were four "super flumen Duglas . . . Ilodie
fluvius ille vocatur AngHce Duggles, et currit sub urbe de Wygan, per
decern miliaria a fluvio de Merseie distante in comitatu Lancastrice."
Trevisa translated this (in 1387) "... uppon the ryver Douglas. . . .
Now that ryver hatte [is called] Dugglys in Englische, and that ryver
renneth under the citee of Wygan, that is ten myle from the ryver
Mersea in Lancastreschire." — Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi
Cestrensis, with Trevisa's and another translation, Babbington and
Lumby's ed., vol. v. (1874), PP- 328, 329.
- Scottish Land Names, 1894, p. 15.
^ Irish Local Names Explained, 1S84, p. 40 ; Irish Names of Places,
2nd sen, 1875, P- 266.
44 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
etc., from Gr. eKKXrjcria, ' an assembly of citizens,' ' the
church.'
Everton. — The earliest recorded mention of Everton
seems to be in a document of 9 Hen. III. (1225),^ in which
the name is spelled exactly as it is to-day. Everton was,
however, probably one of the six unspecified berewicks
noted in Domesday as pertaining to the manor of Derbei
(West Derby). The late Sir J. A. Picton- followed Syers'^ in
stating that Everton occurs in Domesday as Hiretun. But
the context of the passage in Domesday shows that Everton
cannot be intended, and that Beamont^ is probably right in
assigning Hiretun to Tarleton. There would not at first
sight appear to be a connection between the names of
Everton and York, yet there is a fairly intimate one. The
Saxons transformed theCelto-Roman^i^wrt«^;« or Evoracuin
into Eofor-ivic or Efer-wic' (the variations in spelling are
numerous, but the pronunciation remains practically the
same), of which ' York ' is a corruption, the wic or wich
(Lat. vicus, Gr. o?kos) being an Anglo-Saxon equivalent of
' habitation,' ' village,' etc. Eofor or efer means ' a wild
boar.' Everton was therefore originally the enclosure or
farmstead of Efer or Eofor, which was a tolerably common
Saxon name. It occurs, for instance, several times as a
personal name in ' Beowulf,' " the oldest heroic poem in any
Germanic tongue "; and, compounded, more than once in
the famous list of benefactors to the Church of Durham,
dating from the ninth century.*"'
Farnworth. — 'The fern-farm.' A.-Sax, fearn (Ger.
Earn), 'fern ' or 'brake '; A.-Sax. 7ueorthig, 'farm,' 'estate.'
Fazakerley, we read, " was long the residence of an
ancient family of that name," who, no doubt, derived their
cognomen from the place. The origin of the first portion
of the name seems obscure, but we can divide the word into
^ Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, ii. 64''.
^ Memorials of Liverpool, 1875, '•• 334-
3 Hist, of Everton, 1830, p. 41.
* Domesday Cheshire and Lancashire, 1882, xv'\
® Anglo-Saxon /had the sound of w wherever possible.
^ Liber Vitse Ecclesice Dunelmensis, Stevenson's ed., Surtees Soc.
vol. xiii., 1841. Also included in Sweet's Oldest English Texts,
Early Eng. Text Soc, 1885, pp. 153 sqg.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 45
three Anglo-Saxon vocables : fas, 'fringe'; aker (acer\ '(cul-
tivated) field,' and kj (/ed/i), ' meadow,' which might imply
' the meadowland with a certain or particular border or
boundary field.' There is no other Fazakerlcy in England.
The nearest approach to it is Fazeley, a place situate upon
the border of the counties of Stafford and Warwick. We
must reject the idea of a connection with the Ga.e\. /dsac/i,
which, as an adjective, signifies 'desolate,' 'desert'; as a
substantive, (i) 'grassy headland of a ploughed field,'
(2) 'wilderness'; but it should be noted thvLt fatvs is a
Northern dialect-word for ' fox,'i which has entered largely
into personal and local nomenclature ; and, on the whole, it
seems probable that this word forms the first element of
' Fazakerley.' ' A(c)kerley ' by itself is an English local and
personal name, and it probably had the same signification
as 'Acre Dale,' which the 'Hist. Eng. Diet.,' quoting from
Halliwell, defines as 'lands in a common field in which
difterent proprietors held portions of greater or less quan-
tities.'- I do not attach importance to an isolated case of
'a(c)ker' being found in Cheshire to represent a sheet of
water. ^
Fearnhead. — ' The high ground overgrown with ferns '
— A.-Sa.x. /earn, 'fern'; hedfod, 'head,' 'high ground.'
Formby. — The name of this Scandinavian settlement is
given as Fomebei in Domesday, and Forneby was the spelling
in the thirteenth century. The mutation to ' Formby ' is
simple, the later ;;/ resulting, phonetically, from the flat
^ Halliwell, Diet, of Archaic and rrovincial Words, 1850.
2 Much has of late years been written upon the medieval acre, and
authors have differed. It may, however, be said roughly that the open
or common field (A.-Sax. feld) was formerly divided into smaller fields,
or shots (A.-S. scedt), or furlongs (A.-S. furh-lang, i.e., furrow-length) ;
these, again, being split up into acres (A.-S. itcet-) of varying shapes
and sizes, but perhaps most usually consisting of four or five selions
(Lat. selio, Fr. silloji), or strips, or beds, separated from each other by
balks (A.-S. bale), or ridges (A.-S. firycg), or riggs (O. Nor. hrygg\r)),
or linches (A.-S. hlinc), or as they were, and are, often styled in the
North, rains (O. Nor. rein, Ger. rain), i.e., unploughed strips. See
Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 1S97, pp. 373 sijtj.: Gomme,
Village Community, 1890, pp. 193, 194; Seebohm, English Village
Community, 1884, pp. 2, 106, 384, etc.
3 Kendrick, Roman Remains Discovered at Wilderspool near
Warrington, Transactions Chester Archceological See, vol. iii., 1SS5,
P- 195-
46 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
labial ^ immediately following the liquid n. In the same
^■A.-^ Briinlmrgh became Bromborough, D2inb?'eatan, Dumbar-
ton. ' Formby ' is thought locally to mean 'the pious or
holy place.' It is true that the O. 'Nor. forn (long o) repre-
sents ' an offering to God '; but I rather think that we must
look for an explanation of the first element of the place-
name to the O. Nor. /orn (short o), * old ' (A. -Sax. /yrn).
Formby is the most prominent point on the South Lanca-
shire coast, and would probably be the earliest settlement of
the Northmen in that district ; and when other Norse posts
were established this original one might easily be looked
upon as ' the old village,' or Forn-by^ Saxon equivalents
are Aldbrough, Oldham, etc. There is only one Formby in
Great Britain.
Unfortunately, Old Norse documents do not help us very
much in regard to fixing the etymology of the less important
Scandinavian settlements in England, especially those on
the West Coast. Thus no Lancashire or Cheshire place-
name is to be traced in the * Icelandic Sagas, etc., relating to
the British Isles,' published by the Rolls Office ( text by
Vigfusson, 1887; translation by Dasent, 1894), although we
meet with Gri7ns-bcBr (Grimsby), Hjarta-pollr (Hartlepool),
Hvita-byr (Whitby), Jbr-vik (York), Skardha-borg (Scar-
borough), Jdrua-vibtha (Yarmouth), Man (Man), Onguh-ey
(Anglesey), etc., in them; and this applies, with stronger
reason, to Vigfusson and Powell's 'Corpus Poeticum Boreale,'
1883, and the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus ('Saxonis
Grammatici Gesta Danorum,' Holder's ed., 1886), the first
nine books of which History have been translated and edited
by Elton and Powell respectively (1894).
Freshfield is ' the field of the fresh-water spring or
streamlet,' fresJi being an old dialect-word for a current of
fresh water running into tidal water.^
Garston. — This name is referable to the A.-Sax. g(zrs^
1 Compare /£>r«^, 'first,' 'former,' 'fore,' in Halliwell's Diet, of
Archaic and Provincial Words, 1850; and forne, 'anterior,' in the
fifteenth-century vocabulary Promptorium Parvulorum, Way's ed.,
Camden .Soc, 1843-65 ; also the place-name /^?r«//a^z (Oldfield) in the
celebrated Icelandic record, tlie Landnamabok.
* " He shall drink nouglit but brine ; for I'll not show him
Where the (\u\c)<^frc'shes are." — Shak., Tempest, iii. 2.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 47
* grass,' combined with the usual tihi. It denotes the use
which the early Saxon proprietor made of the land.
Gateacre.— 'The road-field '—Mdle. 'Eng. gate, 'way,'
* road ' (compare Scand. gata (gade), ' way,' 'road,' ' street ';
A.-Sax. geai), and acre {cecer), ' field.' I think, all things
considered, that this is a more probable etymology than
'goat-field' — A.-Sax. gdt, 'goat.' The name of Gates-
head (-on-Tyne), which was long thought to mean ' Goat's
Head,' is now concluded to represent ' Road's Head.' See
Gavton in the Wirral Section.
Glazebrook. — The village is named from the stream,
which, like Alt and Douglas, bears a Celtic name — Gael.
g/aise, glas, ' streamlet.' The invading Saxons added broc
(brook) to the to them meaningless Erse term giaise. The
form Glasebroc occurs in the Nonarum Inquisitiones, tcvip.
Edw. HI., fol. 40.
Golborne. — The early spelHngs of the name of this
place, namely, Goldborne (1301), and Goldburii in the
Testa de Nevill, perhaps indicated the yellow colour of the
burn or brook whence the township derived its appellation.
Haigh. — 'The hedged enclosure' — A.-Sax. haga.
Hale.— In the thirteenth century we read of the " lands
of Hales" and the "town of Halis." The name Hale is
fairly common in England, and sometimes refers to a large
residence or hall — A.-Sax. heall. We thus have an ancient
Hale Hall here, and there is a Hale Hall in Cumberland ;
but both ' hale ' and ' hall ' are frequently referable to
A.-Sax. hcaKji) — O. Nor. hallir) — 'a slope,' pi. healas or
halas ; and the early spellings quoted above would seem to
lead to the conclusion that the original name of the Lanca-
shire township was intended to signify ' the slopes.'^
Halsall. — This place is referred to in Domesday as
Herleshala and Hekshale, while the present spelling Halsall
^ In the Exchequer Lay Subsidy Roll for Lancashire, 1332, edited
by Mr. J. Paul Rylands for the Miscellanies (vol. ii.) of the Lane, and
Chesh. Rec'd Soc, it is surprising to find that, while only 16 names
are returned for Manchester, with a total value of 46 shillings, the now
insignificant village of Ilale stands with 25 names, and pays the sum of
54 shillings. This Subsidy Roll practically forms a directory of all
above the mere peasant class living in Lancashire in 1332.
48 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
occurs in 1256. The first element in the name was once
foisted by Canon Taylor,^ following a German fashion,
upon the Celtic hal, ' salt.' The exact meaning of A.-Sax.
health), which is generally rendered haia and hale in Domes-
day, has been doubtful to the moderns. Until compara-
tively recently everybody followed Kemble^ in his attribution
of ' stone house,' ' hall '; but it is now accepted that ' slope '
or ' rising ground ' is the signification which is often meant,
and this assumption is apparently borne out by the Old
Norse word hall{r), ' slope,' ' hill.' In many English place-
names with the termination under discussion the first
element is a personal appellation, as that of the present
Halsall doubtless is. There are no grounds for associating
the A.-Sax. sele, O. Nor. sal{r) (dat. and accus. sal), ' hall,'
' dwelling,' with Halsall.
Haydock. — It is remarked by Baines or his editors^
that "this place is supposed to derive its name from the
hedges of oak, or rather the oaks in the hedges, some of
which, it is said, were planted as early as the reign of
Edward the Confessor "; but this etymology is obviously
impossible : it leaves unaccounted for the d which is present
in all the older renderings of the unique name — Eydock,
Haidoc, Haydok, etc. Taken literally the name would
mean 'hedge-dock' — A. -Sax. hege-docce ; the hedges here-
abouts may have been overrun with the troublesome dock
or sorrel ; or pasture-land enclosed by a hedge — such
enclosure being called in Anglo-Saxon a haga — may have
been in this condition ; or Eydock may be simply the
A.-Sax. eci-docce, ' water-dock.' In the absence of sufficiently
early documental evidence — the place is not mentioned in
Domesday or the Testa de Nevill — it is difficult to say
with certainty what the modern ' Haydock ' originally repre-
sented : there do not seem to be any grounds for connect-
ing the name with A.-Sax. heg, ' hay.' But, on the whole,
the latter element of the name is probably the E. Eng. doke
or doak, ' a hollow '"* — O. Nor. dokk, ' pit,' ' pool ;' the whole
name therefore representing ' the hollow place enclosed by a
hedge.'
^ Words and Places, 1864, p. 392.
'^ Codex Diplomaticus, iii. xxix.
^ Lane, 1870, ii. 212.
* Halliwell, Diet, of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1850.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 49
Hindley. — In the Testa de Nevill (fol. 406) we find
Hindele. In the Survey of 13 20- 1346, Chethani Soc,
vol. Ixxiv., 1868, the name occurs as Hyndekghe. It may have
signified ' the hind or hinder meadowland '—A. -Sax. hindan
and ledh ; but in view of other similarly-formed local names
we must give the preference to an association with the
female of the stag.^ As to ' hind,' a peasant, its Anglo-
Saxon etymon hina, 'a servant,' invariably appears in place-
names as hin-^ as in the numerous Hintons. There is still
another possible, though in this case doubtful, connection :
Kemble- makes a hind or hynd represent the third part of
the hide, the Anglo-Saxon land-measure of varying acreage.-^
Hollinfare. — Literally ' the holly ferry ' {over the
Mersey) — E. Eng. Jiolin (A.-Sax. /iok\g)n), ^hoWy' ; f am,
'passage.' The contiguity of HoUin's Green, however,
renders it possible that the ferry was attended to by a
person named Hollin.
Houghton. — ' The farmstead on the heel or projecting
ridge of land ' — A.-Sax. hoh, 'heel,' 'ridge'; iu/i, 'farm-
stead.'
Hulme. — ' Low riparian meadowland ' — dialectic varia-
tion of A.-Sax. holm.
Huyton figured in Domesday as Hitune. The name
means ' the elevated enclosure or farmstead ' — A. -Sax. hedh
(Mdle. Eng. hig, hy, etc.), ' high,' combined with the usual
tun.
Ince or Ince Blundell. — It seems almost natural to fly
to the Celtic for the etymology of Ince (Wei. ynys, Gael.
i?mis, Ir. ifiis, en?its, Scot, inch, ' island ') ; but where Domes-
day, as in this case, has Hinne, and circumstances seem to
preclude the theory of an island, or even of low riparian
land, it is but reasonable that resort should be had to
^ " The equine species has given to us ' Horsley '; the bovine,
'Cowley,' ' Kinley,' and 'Oxley'; the deer, 'Hartley,' 'Rowley,'
' Buckley ' and Hindley ; the fox, ' Foxley '; the hare, ' Harley '; and the
sheep, 'Shipley.'" — Bardsley, English Surnames, 5th ed., 1S97, p. 119.
- Codex Diplomaticus, iii. xxx.
3 As Domesday units, Mr. Round (Feudal England, 1895, P- 37)
gives 30 acres in the virgate, and 4 virgates in the hide, which there-
fore represents 120 acres,
4
50 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
another language. In Old Norse we have mni, ' inn,'
'abode,' 'house,' 'hall' (there exists an Ince Hall). The
genit. sing, of t'/mz is mm's, which would be used with
dative significance with the preposition ///, ' to,' which the
genius of the Icelandic language requires should take the
genitive case, as in the phrase ok til sama in?iis, ' and to
the same house.' Ines was the spelling in the reign of
Edward III. {1327-1377). Blundell is the patronymic of
the owners of the manor.
Kenyon. — In the Testa de Nevill (fol. 405^) we find
mention of Robert le Kenien, from whom this township
derives its name. In the Survey of 1 320-1 346, Chetham
Soc, vol. Ixxiv., 1868, we have the ?,]it\\mg Ke?iea?i. It is not
quite clear what ' Kenien ' or ' Kenean ' means. It may be
a mutated form of the O. Fr. chanoifie^ ' a canon ' ; or pos-
sibly of O. Fr. kienin {chienin), ' doglike,' ' canine,' or O. Fr.
kenon, ' little dog '; compare such names as William le Chien,
Eborard le Ken, Thomas le Chene (O. Fr. c/ien (ken), ' dog '),
quoted from mediaeval rolls, as nicknames from the animal
kingdom, by Bardsley in his 'English Surnames,' 5th ed.,
1897, pp. 492, 534, 567.
Kirkby. — The Domesday Cherchebi is the Norse equiva-
lent of the modern English Churchtown — O. Nor. kirkja
(Dan.-Norw. kirke^ Swed. kyrkd)^ ' church ' ; O. Nor. byr
(Scand. by), ' settlement,' * village.'
Kirkdale, the Domesday Chirc/icdek, is the low ground
upon which stood the Northmen's church — O. Nor. kirkja
(Dan.-Norw. kirke, Swed. kyrka), 'church'; O. Nor. da/r
(Scand. da/), 'dale.'
Knowsley is a corruption of ' Kenulf's Ley ' — A.-Sax.
/eii/i, ' mcadowland ' — as the Domesday spelling Chenulveslei
shows. Kenulf— A.-Sax. Chie IVulf, 'Bold Wolf.'
Lathom. — This township and ancient chapelry was
noted for many centuries as the seat of the Stanleys. The
Domesday spelling of the name was Latune. In 122 1
we find Ladhun ; and not very long afterwards {temp.
Edward I.) we read of Sir Robert Lathom and "Thomas de
Lathum his grandson." We have here the O. Nor. hlath
or hlatha (dat. pi. hlathum) — Dan.-Norw. lade, Swed. lada —
HUNDRED OF IV EST DERBY 51
' Storehouse,' ' barn.' Lai/A or /af/ie is a Lancashire dialect-
word for 'barn.'i
Leigh. — We have a historical record that the leighs or
leas (A.-Sax. /ea/i, ' meadowland ') in this district are, or
were, '* green and luxuriant."- It is said that the original
guttural pronunciation of Leigh is still retained by the
natives. West Leigh and Astley (East Leigh) are situated
with respect to Leigh exactly as their names imply.
Linacre represents ' the lint or flax field ' — A.-Sax. /hi,
' flax,' ' linen,' and acer, ' field ' ; O. Nor. lin-akr, ' flax field.'
Litherland occurs in Domesday both as Liderlant and
Literland. In the time of King John (1199-1216) we find
Litterland ; of Edward II. (1307-1327), when Norman-
French linguistic influence was being considerably weakened,
Lytherland ; and in 137 1, Letherland. The probable etymo-
logy is the O. Nor. hruliar-la7id, ' the sloping land,' which
corresponds exactly with the natural aspect of the township,
liut see under Liverpool.
Lowton was formerly Lauto7i,^ i.e., the tun or settle-
ment by or on a mound or rising ground — A.-Sax. hlcew,
'mound,' 'tumulus,' 'hill.' This word {hlcew) has come
down to us in place-names both as loiv and laia, the latter
spelling and pronunciation now being mainly confined to
the South of Scotland.^
^ I'icton, South Lancashire Dialect, Proceedings Lit. and Phil. Soc.
L'pooJ, vol. xix. (1864-65), p. 35.
- Baines, Lane, 1870, ii. 203.
^ Survey of 1320- 1346, Chatham Soc, vol. Ixxiv,, 1868.
* This vowel-change is not restricted to Old English, "^m is the
only diphthong which the Latin language has preserved, that is, in the
generality of cases ; for here also we find a weakening — to — common
in early times. It is observable, however, that the new form in never
drove out the old one in au ; but the two remained side by side. . . .
Corssen supposes that au was employed by educated men in words
where was heard in the mouth of the countryman. This is borne out
by the anecdote of Suetonius ( Vespasian, 22) which Corssen quotes.
The homely Emperor was taken to task by the courtier Florus for
calling a plauslruDi (cart) a plostruvi ; and retaliated next day by
pronouncing his critic's name as befitted ears so polite — Flaurus. . . .
Somewhat analogous to the change of sound from au to in Latin is
the pronunciation of au in French ; and in some parts of tlie North of
England 'law' is pronounced like lo." — Peile, Greek and Latin
Etymology, 1869, pp. 154-155.
4—2
52 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Lunt or Z?oid here, as in other Danish districts, is
referable to the O. Nor. htndir), ' a sacred grove.' Lunt
was therefore the scene of the pagan rites of the ancient
Scandinavians who settled in the region.
Lydiate. — This name occurs in Domesday as Leiaie,
which may have meant originally ' the road over the
meadow' — A.-Sax. Icd/i, 'lea,' 'meadow'; and geat, 'gate,'
'road,' 'passage'; but it is more probable that the name is
simply the A.-Sax. hlidgeat (Mdle. Eng. lidgate or lidyate),
' lidgate,' 'postern.' The word is found in some rural
districts as ' lidgett ' (which is simply a slurred pronuncia-
tion of ' lidyate ' or ' lydiate '), and in London it appears as
Ludgate ; in the former case the old palatal pronunciation
of g (as in ' young ' and ' year,' A.-Sax. geoiig and gear)
being retained, in the latter the guttural (hard) enunciation
surviving. We find the spelling Lydyate in the Nonarum
Inquisitiones [temp. Edvv. IIL), fol. 40''.
MaghulL — Domesday gives Magele as being one of six
manors held by the Saxon Uctred before the Conquest. In
the Testa de Nevill (fol. 396) the name occurs as Maghale.
The present spelling is found in 1635. Some have argued
(urging the traces of strong Irish influence in the neighbour-
hood) that the first element of ' Maghull ' must be the Gael.
iiiag/i, ' a plain '; but there is little doubt that the magh in
' Maghull ' is no more of Erse origin than is the equally
Gaelic-looking ai/gh in 'Aughton,' and that the name
should really be divided — taking the Testa de Nevill
spelling as affording the best clue to the etymology — as
follows : Alag-hale, where hale (A.-Sax. healh, O. Nor. hallr)
is the common topographic suffix meaning ' a slope.' Mag-
hull is situate on the only rising ground in the immediate
neighbourhood. A personal appellation is frequently found
prefixed to English place-names ending with mutated forms
of liealh or hallr, but in such cases we invariably have
clear traces of the genitive (possessive) s or n, which is
entirely lacking in ' Maghull.' A connection with the
common A.-Sax. vmg or niaga, 'son,' 'descendant,' 'kins-
man,' is, however, within the bounds of possibility.
Although, as I have said, I discard the notion of the name
Maghull being of Erse origin, it is nevertheless interesting
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 53
to note that the place was " formerly often called Mai7 or
Ma/e,"^ a circumstance which is in agreement with Irish
phonetics, in which g/i, under certain conditions, is mute.
The spelling ATael, too, occurs in a well-known Lancashire
record of the first half of the fourteenth century.- Now
when we recollect that inael is Old Irish^ for ' a bald or bare
hill,'' it seems hard to resist the inference that ' MaghuU ' is
of Erse origin. But it is quite clear that, while a Alacl
might result from a MaghuU^ a MaghuU could not possibly
result from an original Mnel. The old Irish plantation
influence in the district, already mentioned, was evidently
responsible for the Hibernicising of the Magele of Domes-
day and the Maghale of the Testa de Nevill into Mael.
Makerfield. — The first portion of this name has much
tested the resources of etymologists, and little wonder, con-
sidering the variation in spelling which it has undergone in
the course of its career — Macerfcld, Maserfelth, Maresfeid,
Maxsefeld, etc. An unlikely derivation put forward a long
time ago was from the Gael, magh, 'a plain.' I do not
remember to have seen the A.-Sax. mceger (O. Nor. magr^
Lat. macer, Eng. meagre), 'lean,' 'poor,' 'barren,' advanced.
The Swedes have the expressions mager Jord, 'poor or barren
soil,' and viager aker, ' a sterile field '; while Cicero con-
nected macer with sohan, indicating ' poor soil.' We must
recollect that the A,-Sax. and Ger. /e'/^/ originally denoted a
place where trees had been felled. Local antiquaries
identify Makerfield with the Maserfelth where Oswald, king
of the Northumbrians, was slain in battle with Penda, king
of the Mercians, in 642, as related by the Venerable Bede ;
but this is not allowed in general history. Stevenson, refer-
ring to the conflict, says : " Although a place near Winwick,
in Lancashire, named Mascrfield, has claims to be regarded
as the spot where this battle was fought, yet there are much
stronger arguments in favour of Oswestry {i.e., 'Oswald's
Tree '), in Shropshire.'"^ And Plummcr, the latest editor of
^ Baines, Lane, 1870, ii. 425.
- Survey of 1320-1346, Chclham Roc, vol. Ixxiv., 1868.
^ Modern Irish and Gaelic have the form uiaol (Welsh, tiioel), ao
being a modern aphthong substituted for the older ae and oe,
■• Joyce, Irish Local Names Explained, 1884, p. 104.
^ Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, Stevenson's ed., 1S41, i. 177.
54 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Bede, equating Maserfelth with Oswestry, makes no mention
of the claims of the Lancashire Makerfield.^ The student
of battle-sites should not, however, omit to note Mr. Browne's
'Pre-Norman Sculptured Stones in Lancashire,' in the
Transactiojis of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian
Society, vol. v., 1887. The Welsh name of Oswestry is
Croes [cross] Oswallt.
Melling. — The Domesday spelling is Melinge. At first
sight we would appear to have here a pure Anglo-Saxon
patronymic ; but there is little doubt that ' Melling ' is a
Saxonisation of the name of the Norman, Vivian de Molines,
to whom, shortly after the Conquest, Roger de Poictou
granted a large tract of land in this district. The Molyneux
family trace their descent from William des Molines, so
named from Moulins (' the Mills '), a town of Bourbonnais
in France. The historical gradation in the spelling of this
family name is as follows : Molines, Molynes, Moulins,
Mulans, Mulynes, Mulyneus, Molineux, Molyneux.
Mersey. — The circumstance that the Mersey, unlike
the Dee, the Severn, the Thames, and other English rivers,
does not seem to bear a Celtic name, was once thought to
confirm a widely-accepted theory that within historic times
the Dee and the Mersey had but one estuary between them,
and that certain defined depressions of the Wirral peninsula
once conveyed the superfluous waters of the Mersey into
the then larger volume of the sister river. The Belisama
of Ptolemy, after a protracted controversy, was concluded
to be the Ribble, and, there apparently being a lack of
reference to the Mersey during the Roman sway in this
country, it was estimated, seeing that the Danes and Norse-
men sailed up the river, that the Mersey must have cut
itself an independent outlet to the sea, by way of what is
now Liverpool, between the fifth and eighth centuries. But
Mr, T. G. Rylands, F.S.A., who, originally instigated by a
friend's interrogation as to whether the Belisama was the
Mersey or the Ribble (the Editors of the ' Monumenta
Historica Britannica,' 1848, gave both), devoted almost a
' Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, Plummer's ed., 1896, i. 451, ii. 494.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 55
lifetime to the study of Ptolemy, has conclusively proved^
that the Belisama can only be the Mersey.
Mr. Rylands's researches into Ptolemy's geography of our
north-western coast may be summed up as follows :
langanorum Prom. = BrachypwlL
Tisobius = Traeth Mawr.
Seteia = Dee.
Belisama = Mersey,
Setantiorum Portus = Ribble.
Ituna = Solway.
In Domesday the Mersey figures as Mersha (' Inter
Ripam et Mersham '). The earliest Saxon document
mentioning the Mersey which has so far been found is the
will of Wulfric Spott, which was confirmed by King
Ethelred in 1004. This Wulfric was a Mercian nobleman,
a large landowner (even for those times), and the founder
of the Abbey of Burton-on-Trent. He bequeathed to his
sons ^Ifhelm and Wulfag, ititer alia, the lands "betwux
Ribbel and Mcerse and on Wirhalum." The will was
printed by Sir William Dugdale,- with a Latin translation
and an identification-list of the place-names mentioned in
it. Sir Francis Palgrave^ describes the testament as "a
singular and important document requiring much topo-
graphical and legal illustration." He adds that " Dugdale's
translation is not particularly accurate," a term which might
also be applied to Sir William's transcription of the will.
It is worth remembering that just as we have a Wallasea
(island) on the coast of Essex, so have we a Mersea^ (island)
^ Ptolemy Elucidated, 1893, passim. The broad results of his
elaborate investigations had, however, long previously been published,
viz., in the Transactions Hist. Soc. Lane, and Chesh. : Ptolemy's
Geography of the Coast from Carnarvon to Cumberland, 1877-78,
pp. 81 sqq., and The Map-History of the Coast from the Dee to the
Duddon, 1878-79, pp. 83 sqq.
^ Monasticon Anglicanum, 1682, i. 266 ; ed. 1S17-30, iii. 37.
* Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth : Anglo-Saxon
Period, 1832, ii. 293.
■* This is the island mentioned in the entry in the Saxon Chronicle
under A. D. 895, which describes how, in this year, the Danish army
departed from Wirheal (Wirral) into N. Wales, marching thence
across Northumbria and East Anglia (striving to avoid Alfred's forces)
into Essex, finally taking up their quarters on Mersea — " oth thast hie
56 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
there. Mcrsca (A.-Sax. Meres-tg) has been explained as
' the sea island,' and Mersey, by analogy, as ' the sea river.'
The latter interpretation, at least, is illogical. The A.-Sax.
f//ere (i) 'sea' (2) 'lake,' 'pool,' 'niere/^ there is little
doubt, is the base of both names ; but, in my opinion, it
must here be translated ' pool ' or ' lake,' not ' sea,' as, for
example, in Alfred's interpolation of 'The Voyages of
Ohthere and Wulfstan ' in his translation of Orosius, where
he speaks of " swi'the micle meras " (very large meres)
throughout " tha moras " (the moors). The low-lying lands
at the mouth of and in the estuary of the Mersey, have,
from time immemorial, like the flat coast of Essex, been
subject to inundations, with the natural result of the forma-
tion of meres and marshes (A.-Sax. f/iersc, for merisc, lit.
' mere-ish '). And I believe the s in both ' Mersey ' and
' Mersea ' may represent not the genitive singular but the
nominative plural case, which, although (as we have just
seen) as in the classic West Saxon, was, like the gen. sing.,
es in the Dano-Saxon dialects. ' Mersey ' would therefore
correspond to an original Meres-ed, just as ' Mersea ' repre-
sents an original Meres-'ig — A.-Sax. ed, O. Nor a, ' river,'
'water;' A.-Sax. f^(form o^ed), O. Nor, ey, ' island.' It will be
seen that to be quite regular the Essex Mersea and the Lanca-
shire and Cheshire Mersey should be reversed in spelling.
Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, 120 years ago,
was within reasonable distance of what we must accept as
the true etymology of ' Mersey.' Reading Mcersc (instead
of Mtcrse) as the name of the river in the will of Wulfric,
he remarks : " from the marshes and marshy meadows that
skirt its channel on both sides, in one continued line to the
comon on Eastseaxna land easteweard on an it^land thret is iite on
thwre s:e, thxt is Meresighiitxi." This part of the Chronicle dealing
with Alfred's campaigns against the Danes Dr. Sweet describes (Anglo-
Saxon Reader, 1894, p. 35) as " a perfect model of Old English prose,"
while Prof. Earle considers it to be "the most remarkable piece of
writing in the whole series of Chronicles." In Elhelwerd's Chronicle
{lib. iiii.) the Essex Mersea is referred to as "a place in Kent "! — "ad
Meresige locum Cantiam " {sic).
^ The A.-Sax. jno-e has not come down to our day in its original
form without undergoing metaplasm in the inleival. For example,
Levins's Manipulus Vocabulorum, 1570 (printed by the Early Eng.
Text Soc. ), has the epenthetic form meare,
• 1'
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 57
sea, obtaining the descriptive denomination of Mersc-ey,
Mers-cy, or marshy water. "^
A word may be added as to the conceivabiHty of the first
element of ' Mersey ' being a rehc of Celtic nomenclature.
At first sight there does not appear to be much in common
between Belisama and Mersey ; but a phonological exami-
nation of the name which Ptolemy probably wrote down
from the lips of Roman or Greek sailors may perhaps induce
us to take a contrary view. The most noticeable point to
begin with is the occurrence of s in the middle of both
Belisama and Mersey. Turning then to the first letter of
Ptolemy's name, l>, phonologists well know that this is
readily mutable to both v and ;//, and conversely.- £ is the
second letter in both names. Then we have / in Belisama
and r in Mersey. This presents no difficulty ; / and r, both
liquids, are or have been interchangeable in many languages,
the greater tendency being for r to slide into the easier-
sounded /.^ The dual occurrence of medial s having
already been noted, this, of course, is as far as the com-
parison can be taken. The apparent similarities may only
be coincidental, but it is at any rate just conceivable that
the Saxons might transform, say, a Celtic Marusia (' dead
water '), a name which possessed no meaning for them,
into Mcres-eci, which was full of significance to them. But,
after all, this is pure conjecture.
From a work entirely devoted to the Mersey, like Dr.
Blower's,* we might have expected some treatment of the
^ Hist, of Manchester, 1775, ii. 23S.
- See Peile, Greek and Latin Etymology, 1869, pp. 234, 235, and
Ma.K Miiller, Science of Language, 2nd sen, 1864, p. 145 ; com-
pare the Welsh mutations — e.g. luira, J bread'; dy fara (vara), 'thy
bread '; fy niara, ' my bread '; the Irish d, /J/ = vov -w ; Mod. Gr. ^ — v,
Lat. Sahrma = Severn, Lat. Abona = Avon, etc. ; and note, in our
own language, 'somersault,' from Fr. soubresaut ; 'malmsey,' from
Fr. malvoisie ; 'marble,' prim, from Lat. juar/nor.
3 Peile, Greek and Latin Etymology, 1S69, p. 81 ; Max Miiller,
Science of Language, 2nd ser., 1864, jip. 165, 166; Morris, Historical
English Grammar, 1875, P- 44) etc. Eng. 'palfrey ' is ultimately from
Low Lat. paravercJiis ; 'chapter,' conversely, from Lat. capilitluin ;
' Gibraltar ' is a corruption of Gibel-al- Tarik. The Chinaman is perhaps
the greatest adult sufferer from lalhtion or lambdaci.sm. In his mouth
' America ' becomes Melika.
■* Mersey, Ancient and Modern, by Benj. Blower, 1878.
w
58 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
name, but I can find nothing in the book beyond a Hteral
reproduction from Baines of an untenable etymological
connection with ' Mercia,' which Sir Peter Leycester seems
to have suggested originally : speaking of the great Midland
kingdom this Cestrian chronicler said •} " It was called
Mercia, not from the river Mersey running from the corner
of AVirral, in Cheshire, because that river was the utmost
limit thereof westward ; but I rather believe that river took
denomination from this kingdom, which it bounded on that
side, and was called Mercia, because it abutted or bordered
upon part of all or most of the other kingdoms of the
Heptarchy."
Netherton. — Anglo-Saxon : ' the lower enclosure or
farmstead ' — A.-Sax. neothor^ ' lower.'
Newsham. — This name now survives only in Newsham
Park and Newsham House. In the Testa de Nevill it is
spelt Neiisti7)i (fol. 403) and Neusom (fol. 409), forms which
point to an original A.-Sax. Niwehustwi, ' at the new
houses,' husiim being the dative plural of Mis, 'house.'
Other English Newshams figure in Domesday as Newe-
husufi, Newhuson, etc. \ and the Durham Newsham appears
in the Boldon Book as Newsom.
Newton is the A^eweton of Domesday — A.-Sax, 7ihve,
' new.' The primary signification of A.-Sax. f/m was ' enclo-
sure'; then it naturally came to mean 'farm' or 'manor'; and
the nsLxnef/m was retained when, in process of time, a village
grew up round the farm. There are several scores of
Newtons in England, and it is probable that our Newton,
like most of the rest, simply denotes the spot where a Saxon
cultivator had taken up a new estate ; but Dr. Robson, the
Warrington antiquary, had a much less prosaic theory of the
origin of the name. He says that, on the death of King
Oswald, the traditionary site of whose palace, and of the well,
is at Wood End, near Hermitage Green, " the royal residence
seems to have been transferred to another site to which
naturally enough the name of Newton, the new town or
vi7/, was given."-
' Antiquities of Cheshire, 1673, p. 92.
2 Transactions Hist. Soc. Lane, and Chesh., 1851-52, p. 205.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 59
North Meols. — In Domesday we have A/ek. This
name is referable to the O. Nor. me/r (genit. ??ie/s, pi. me/ar),
'sand-hill,' ' sand-bank.'
Orford.— * The cattle-ford '— A.-Sax. or/, ' cattle ' ; and
ford.
Ormskirk does not figure in Domesday, but the first
settled possession of the ancient parish, and the establish-
ment of the kirk, are ascribed by local historians to a
Northman bearing the common name Orm — O. Nor. or//ir,
'serpent'
Orrell. — ' Orrell ' is all that has come down to us of the
name of a place which in Domesday is chronicled as
Oies^riinck. In the last element of the ancient designation
we have, of course, the O. Nor. mclr (pi. vielar, genit. sing.
mels), * a stretch of sand.' O and U are the Scandinavian
negative particles. Thus, in Swedish, tack is ' agreeable,'
otlick is ' nasty.' It is probable that otdck or its etymon has
nothing to do with Otegri ; but there is an O. Nor. word
teigr, 'a strip of field or meadow-land'; and, as Cleasby
(' Icelandic Diet.') has pointed out, the use of the Icelandic
negative prefix // or b is almost unlimited. The hypothesis,
therefore — I give it for lack of a better — is that Orrell repre-
sented roughly, originally, ' the sandy area out of which not
a strip of meadow-land could be got.' Another Orrell, in
Sefton parish, is set down in Domesday as Otrbigemele.
Padgate. — 'The path-gate ' — A.-Sax, pce^-geat.
Parr. — This name was formerly spelled Par re. A parr
(etymology dubious) is a young salmon ; but it is of course
impossible to connect this fish with Parr. The name is
probably a diminution of A.-Sax. parrtic or pearroc (Scot.
parrok, Eng. parrock), 'croft,' 'enclosure,' 'park.' Compare
Mdle. Eng. parren, ' to enclose ' ; parred, 'enclosed.' This
etymology would seem to be confirmed by a note in Mr.
Way's edition of a celebrated 15th cent, vocabulary^ under
parrok — viz : " In Norfolk, according to Forby, an enclosed
place for domestic anii.ials, as calves, is called a par, and
the farmyard, containing pars for the various animals which
inhabit it, is called a par-yard."
1 Promptorium Parvulorum, Camden Soc, ii. (1S53) 3S4.
6o LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Pemberton. — There is no name resembling Pemberton
to be found in the Testa de Nevill ; but the place is men-
tioned, spelt as it is to-day, in the Survey of 1320-1346,
Chatham Soc., vol. Ixxiv., 1868. Despite the scantiness of
early information as to the name — a fault not uncommon
with Lancashire place-appellations compared with those of
the more fertile, earlier-settled, and consequendy anciently
more thickly peopled counties of the South, East, and West
of England — there is little difficulty in coming to the con-
clusion that the original Anglo-Saxon name was Pin-bearu-
tihi, ' the pine-grove farmstead.' Compare Pamber Forest
in the South of England.
Penketh. — This name has apparently suffered much
curtailment and assimilation in the course of centuries, and
little beyond a more or less reasonable guess can be made
as to its full original meaning. The earliest spelling recorded
seems to be that in the Testa de Nevill (fol. 396), viz., Fe?i-
ket, where the dropping of the present-day final // does not
necessarily mean that the name was pronounced as spelt by
any but Norman-French scribes.
Penketh, however, occurs in the Survey of 1320- 1346,
Chetham Soc, vol. Ixxiv., 1868. The last three letters in
Penketh may represent, as they do in Lambeth (Lamb-hithe)
the Anglo-Saxon hyfh, ' hithe,' ' haven,' ' landing-place ' -^
while the first element of the name may be a mutilated
patronymic, or even refer to a (silver) penny rental — A.-Sax.
penifig (penny). We can imagine how easily Peii{ii)ing-hyth
(or the genit. pi. Pen{n)inga-hyth) could eventually be cor-
rupted into ' Penketh.' On the other hand, as there is a
heath close to the township (at any rate, there is one marked
on the last Ordnance map of the district) it is not impossible
that eth may represent the A.-Sax. hceth (heath). There are
no physiographical or general grounds for Canon Taylor's
classification ('Words and Places,' 3rd ed., 1873, p. 147)
of Penketh with place-names associated with the Welsh pen,
'headland.'
A Cymric origin can, however, it may be interesting to
note for purposes of comparison, be claimed for Penkridge
1 This might seem to be borne out by the spelling Penkythe, which
is found in the Calendarium Inquisitionum Post Mortem, ii. {temp.
Edw. Ill,) 238.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 6i
in Staffordshire. The ancient name was Fennocruciuvi,
which Professor Rhys, perhaps our chief Celticist, explains
as follows •} " penno-s, ' head ' or ' top ' ; cnlcio, which
became in ^V'clsh crFic, now cnlg, a ' heap ' or ' mound ' ;
the whole would mean the top or head of the mound or
barrow."
Pennington was the tun or settlement of the Saxon
Penning family.- Occasionally, however, a place-name with
Feiining may have reference to a rental. Thus Penning-
hamc, near Newton-Stewart, is said to be a ham or piece of
land which was held at a charge of a silver penny (A. -Sax.
pening).
Poulton. — ' The farmstead by the pool ' — A.-Sax. pul,
'pool'; tun, 'farmstead,' 'manor.'
Prescot. — ' The priest's dwelling ' — A.-Sax. preost,
' priest,' and cof, ' cottage.' According to tradition Prescot
" was anciently the habitation of priests."
Rainford is a corruption of Randleford, Randle being
the name of a brook running through the village.^
Rainllill. — In the Survey of 1320-1346, Chetham Soc,
vol. Ixxiv., 1868, we have the spelling Koynhidl. In the early
part of the 15th century Raynliill occurs. The name may
be a corruption of A.-Sax. hrcrfn-hyll, ' raven-hill,' or pos-
sibly an assimilation of some personal appellation (Rain-
ham in Kent was originally Roegingaham) ; but the
former theory is the more feasible. The raven was the
war-emblem of the ancient Danes, and Raven Hill, in
Whitby parish, N. Yorks, obtained its name from the
Danes having set up their standard upon it after landing
in 867. There is, moreover, a village called Ravenhead
within a short distance of Rainhill. But, on the whole, I
am inclined to think that the first element of the name is
nothing more than the Northern dialect-word rain, ' ridge,'
'balk,' etc. — O. Nor. rein {cf. Gcr. rain) 'strip of land ' — in
1 Celtic Britain, 1884, p. 303.
2 Birch's ed. (1876) of Kemble's Saxons in England, i. 470.
' Rev. J. Bridger to the author.
62 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
allusion to the old method of cultivating the hill, viz., sepa-
rating the ploughed portions by rains, i.e., ridges or balks.^
Ravensmeols. — The name of this Scandinavian settle-
ment occurred in Domesday as Erengermeles, the latter por-
tion of which is the usual O. Nor. inelr (genit. case mels),
pi. melar, ' sand-hills ' or ' sand-banks ' ; while the front part
of the name may be referable to the O. Nor. eyrr (Dan. ore,
Swed. or) ' a gravel bank ' (of a river or of small tongues of
land running into the sea), and the O. Nor. eng or engi,
pi. engiar, 'meadows,' the name, upon this hypothesis,
meaning ' the gravel meadow strips among the banks or hills
of sand.' This is, of course, presuming that the name
recorded in the Norman Survey is an approximately correct
rendering of the native appellation, which may otherwise
have embodied a personal name, the raven (O. Nor. hrafti,
Dan. ravn) being the war-emblem of the ancient Danes,
Risley was 'the brushwood pasture' — A.-Sax. hris,
'brushwood'; kah, 'pasture'; or, perhaps, as Risley
borders upon the large moss of that name, 'the rushy
meadow ' — A.-Sax. rise, ' rush.'
Rixton. — The spelling is the same in the Testa de
Nevill. This was ' the farmstead by the rushes ' — A.-Sax.
rix, rise, 'rush ' ; iihi, ' farmstead,' ' manor.'
Roby. — Domesday spelling J^a/fii. The name of this
village is practically identical with that of Raby on the
opposite side of the Mersey, the Rabiloi the Norman Survey
" Inter Ripam et Mersham " doubtless being a copyist's
mistake for Rabic," the spelling which figures in the Cheshire
Domesday. In both ' Roby ' and ' Raby ' we probably
have, prefixed to the usual Scand. word for 'settlement,'
' village ' — by — the animal-name of the original Scandinavian
owner of the settlement, the O. Nor. rd, pron. as roiv^
noise — Dan.-Norw. raa, Swed. ra, both pron. raw — mean-
ing 'a roe.' This animal-name was borne by more than
one member of the royal family of ancient Denmark.
J See Note, p. 45 ; also Halliwell, Diet, of Archaic and Provincial
English, 1850 ; and Seebohm, English Village Community, 1884,
p. 381.
2 Raby occurs in The Great de Lacy Inquisition of February 16,
131 1, Chetham Soc, vol. Ixxiv., 186S.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 63
Sankey. — Some of the old spellings found of this name
are : Sa/iki, Sanky, Sanchi\ Sonky, Sankye, Sonkey, Sanckey,
and Sonkie. All these seem to point to one signification :
* the sunken (or low) place by the water ' — A. -Sax. sencan
(pret. sing, sanc)^ 'to sink'; ig (/y) primarily 'island,' but
also indicating low riparian land.
Mr. Beamont^ mentions the absurd derivation " from the
words ' sand ' and ' quay ' " ; and I can trace no historical
grounds for his alternative etymology, " the Sank, the brook
which goes through the place, with the ey or eyot at its
mouth."
In some ' Notes on the Local, Natural, and Geological
History of Rainhill,'^ by the Rev. H. H. Higgins, M.A.,
occurs the following passage : " Rainhill was then part of an
island, or rather of a peninsula ; all the flat lands of Speke
and Ditton were under the sea, which swept round far to the
east of Rainhill, leaving Appleton and Bold high and dry,
but pouring its waters over the Sankey Brook district. . . .
This was the condition of things probably not so very long
ago, I mean since the appearance of man upon the earth,
though how many thousands of years ago it would be a mere
guess to suggest."
Scarisbrick. — In an Inspeximus of 17 Edward II.
(1324) contained in the chartulary of Burscough, a charter
without date is cited in which occurs the name "Walter,
lord of Scaresbrek." We meet with Scaresbreck in 1508, and
with Scarisbrick about the middle of the 1 7th century. The
ancient spellings imply ' the slope-land belonging to one
Scar or Skardh ' — O. Nor. brekka, ' a slope.' As a personal
appellation the O. Nor. skardh, ' a gap or cut in a rock,'
meant ' hare-lip.' Skardh or Skardhi was a frequent
Danish proper name on the Runic stones (' Scarborough ' is
derived therefrom), ^ind. brekka figures frequently in Icelandic
local names.
Seaforth. — This modern residential suburb is an
instance, with Liverpool and Hoylake, of a township bear-
ing the name of a sheet of water ; the present appellation
being borrowed by Mr. Gladstone's father from the Scottish
1 Hist, of Sankey, 1889, p. i.
2 Proceedvigs Lit. and Phil. Soc, L'pool, vol. xxi. (1S66-67), p. 64.
64 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Seaforth, which is derived from the O. Nor. scsr (accus. see),
' sea,' 2indifiorthr, ' firth,' ' frith,' ' bay.'
Sephton or Sefton. — Domesday has Sexlone ; the
Valor of Pope Nicholas (1291) CeJ'ton ; the Testa de Nevill,
Ceffton.
The Rev. Geo. W. Wall, Rector of Sephton, writes to
me : " Up to the death of a rector in the sixteenth century,
' Sefton ' obtains in the registers ; but his burial is entered
as ' of Sephton,' and ' Sephton,' with few exceptions, is the
ecclesiastical spelling thenceforward, and is engraved on the
church plate, etc. . . . ' Sephton ' appears the later use. . . .
I do not think that the Lancashire and Cheshire Historical
Society . . . have ever attempted a derivation."
Unless the Sextone of Domesday is a clerical error, it
might imply that the original farmstead was Seaf's tun. We
find this name, combined with the patronymic suffix ing, in
such English village names as Seavington and Sevington.
On the other hand, the designation of the township under
discussion occurs so consistently in post-Domesday times
without a medial genitive s, that it seems impossible to
reject the conclusion that Sextone is a blunder of a Norman
scribe, and that the name must be referable to the O. Nor.
.y6/(Swed. sdf^ Dan.-Norw. siv, A.-Sax. secg), 'sedge.' This
definition would be accurately borne out by the natural
characteristics of the district, which is low and swampy.
We find the word sef in such Icelandic local names as sef-
dcela, 'sedgy hollow,' sef-tjorn, ' sedge-tarn.'
Skelmersdale — Uctred, at the time of the Domesday
Survey, held Schelmeresdele. The literal meaning of the
name is 'the devil's dale' — O. Nor. skelniir (genit. sing.
skelniis), ' devil ' ; but Skelniir was doubtless the name of the
original Scandinavian proprietor.
Southport received its name in a somewhat arbitrary
fashion at a dinner which a Mr. Sutton, of North Meols,
gave in 1792, in celebration of his founding a hotel on the
site of the now favourite watering-place.
Southworth. — The latter element of this name is the
A.-Sax. weort/iig, ' farm,' ' estate.'
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 65
Speke. — Spec is the Domesday rendering. There is only
one Speke in England. The name may possibly be referred
to the A. -Sax. spc'cc-hus^ ' a court hall ' — spc'cc, ' speech '; hus^
' house,' ' hall ' — hence the famous Speke Hall ■} but it is
more probable that it is the A.-Sax. spic (Ger. speck), which,
as Kenible points out, ^ properly signifying 'bacon,' was used
to denote swine pastures.
Spellow. — Anciently Spellawe. In the second element
we have the common A.-Sax. hheto, ' hill,' ' mound ' (as in
Lotv Hill) ; the first syllable in names formed similarly to
this (for example, Spelhoein Northants) is generally ascribed
to the A.-Sax. spell, ' speech,' Spellow thus meaning Speech-
hill.
St. Helen's derives its name from the old episcopal
chapel of St. Helen — called St. Ellen in 1650.
Stanley. — The name of this Liverpool suburb is derived
from the noble family bearing that patronymic, which signi-
fies ' the stony or rocky meadow ' — A.-Sax. sldn, ' stone,'
'rock'; ledli, 'meadow,' 'lea' — and is ultimately to be
referred to Staffordshire. " The family of Stanley is a branch
of the ancient barons of Audeley or Aldelegh, in Stafford-
shire, one of whom, Adam, had two sons, Lydulph and
Adam. The former, Lydulph de Aldelegh (lemp. Stephen),
was progenitor of the barons Audeley : the second son,
Adam, assumed the name of Aldithlega or Audleigh, and
had a son, William, to whom his uncle Lydulph gave Stan-
leigh or Stoneleigh, in Staffordshire, on which he assumed
the surname of Stanley."^ See Winstanley.
Tarbock. — Domesday has Torlwc. The township takes
its name from the local beck or brook, which was anciently
known as the Torhec, that is, 'the strenm of (the Scandi-
navian deity) Tor, or Thor ' — O. Nor. bekkr, Dan. bcek,
Swed. biick, ' brook.'
Thingwall. — "Between the parishes of Childwall and
West Derby, but included in neither of them," say the
^ In later times the ' speke-house ' was the parlour or reception-room
of a convent.
■^ Codex Diplomaticus, iii. xxxvii.
^ Baines, Lane, 1870, ii. 271.
5
66 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
editors of Baines's 'Lancashire' (1870, ii. 387), "lies the
hamlet of Thingwall. Being extra parochial, and now con-
sisting of a single estate, and without any dwellings on it
except the mansion of the proprietor, and an old farm or
manor-house, it seems to have escaped the notice of topo-
graphers, is unnoticed in the census returns, and received
no mention whatever in the original edition of this work ;
yet it gave a surname to an ancient family, and is men-
tioned as a distinct manor in the early ' extents ' and ' in-
quisitions ' of the county, while its name affords one of the
most distinct traces of the early settlement of this part of
the county by Scandinavian invaders."
This Thingwall (O. Nor. //zzV/j^, 'parliament,' vd7/r (dat.
case 7'e//i), ' field ') undoubtedly marks the spot at which the
Norsemen of south-west Lancashire were accustomed to
meet in council, promulgate decrees, and transact other
business of importance, just as the Thingwall in Cheshire
was the parliament-field of the Wirral Norsemen ; while
Tynwald is the parliament-field in the Isle of Man to this
day. The name occurs, more or less disguised, in other
portions of the country which were settled by the Danes and
Norsemen. The modern Norwegian sior-t{h)ing is ' the
great court' or 'parliament.' It seems to have been the
aim of the Scandinavians in choosing a tliiiigvollr to select
a plain in the middle of which rose an eminence upon
which the chief men could take their stand and address the
people upon the lower levels around them. It is thus that
in some cases the Norse name thingvollr or ' thingwall '
eventually came to denote the eminence alone instead of
the flat expanse around it.
The Lancashire Thingwall is not mentioned in Domes-
day, but the chief manor of Derbei Hundred is recorded in
that Survey as containing six berewicks, or subordinate
manors, and it is considered that Thingwall was one of
these.
Thornton. — The ash, the oak, and the thorn (A.-Sax.
\orn) have supplied the bulk of English place-names derived
from plant-life. The various Thorntons are frequently re-
presented in Domesday, as in this instance, by Toreiitun.
The Lancashire Thornton occurs in the Testa de Nevill as
Thorintoji.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 67
Toxteth. — This name occurs in Domesday as Stoche-
stede, i.e., 'the stockaded or enclosed place' — A.-Sax. sfocc
(Ger, stock), 'stake'; A.-Sax. stede (Ger. stadt), 'place,'
' stead.'
Tuebrook is the name of a small stream which has
given a designation to a residential district of Liverpool.
The late Sir J. A. Picton thought he detected a Celtic word
meaning ' muddy ' in the first syllable^ ; but it is probable
that, as ' brook ' is Anglo-Saxon {broc), so also is ' Tue ' —
doubtless Tiw, the god of war, as in 'Tuesday,' A.-Sax.
Tkves-diCg. ' Tuebrook ' is therefore a variant of ' Thorburn,'
where the latter does not represent the Norse heroic per-
sonal name Thorbiorn {l)wrn = hea.r).
Tyldesley.— In the printed Testa de Nevill the name
of this township occurs as Tyldisley, Tyldesley, and Tydesley
on fol. 396, and as Tydesle thrice on fol. 398^ It is impos-
sible from the known existing documentary evidence to say
which spelling is nearest the original form, or whether the
first / in the present-day form and in some of the earlier
spellings is or is not an epenthetic intrusion, due merely to
a rustic assimilative pronunciation, somewhat, perhaps, in
the way that Gibcl-al-Tarik was ultimately resolved into
Gibraltar. Were the first / really intrusive, the name would
probably have an affinity with the Derbyshire Tideswell.
In any case the first element is most likely a personal
appellation. We could scarcely connect the A.-Sax. ///5
(genit. lilies), ' tilth,' ' cultivation,' etc. (from tilian, * to
till '), with a ley or meadow.
UphoUand, near Wigan, occurs in Domesday as
Holland, and there is no doubt that, as in the case of
Downholland, this name is referable to an original A.-Sax.
Holt-land, ' wood-land.' Upholland lies much higher than its
antithesis, Downholland ; hence the later prefix ; and it is
still contiguous to woods. Sec Downholland.
Walton. — The Domesday form is Waletonc. There
are many Waltons in England, and as a rule we have to
distinguish whether the name was applied to a walled tun
or settlement (A.-Sax. weall, ' wall ') or to an enclosure
^ Memorials of Liverpool, i. 4.
5—2
68 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
hemmed in by a weald (A.-Sax. weald, Ger. wald) or wood.
There is, I think, no difficulty here : " In 33 Edward I.
[1305] William de Waleton impleaded Robert Byroun and
forty-six defendants for cutting down oak and other trees
growing in Waleton, under the pretext that the townships of
Waleton and Kyrkeby were united by a wood in which they
had the privilege of husbote."^
Wargrave. — This name has troubled topographic
philologists as to both its elements. C. Blackie^ does not
mention it ; but the untrustworthy Edmunds" glosses it as
' the ditch enclosure.' War has been variously taken to
represent E. Eng. werre, 'war,' A.-Sax. 7vcer, 'sea,' A. -Sax.
7vdr, ' seaweed,' A.-Sax. waroth, ' shore,' A.-Sax. warn,
' defence,' A.-Sax, ivyrt, ' wort,' O. Nor. ver, or A.-Sax. wer,
'fishing-station,' O. Nor. vorr, 'landing-place/ and even
A.-Sax. wer, 'man '; while ^^-az'^ has generally been thought
to be A.-Sax. graf (grave), presumed to mean ' ditch,' or
' trench '; but the Fr. greve, ' strand,' has also been men-
tioned. Study of this and somewhat similar names leads
me to think that ' Wargrave ' indicates ' the grove by the
fishing-station' — A.-Sax. rf^r, 'weir,' 'dam,' 'fish-trap,' 'fish-
pond ' ; A.-Sax. grdf, ' grove.' Ware, on the Lea, is the
spot where the Danes raised a great weir, or dam. Ware-
ham (anc. Werham), in Dorsetshire, was defined by Lewis,
in his 'Topographical Dictionary,' as 'the habitation on the
fishing shore.' It is, however, not impossible that ' War-
grave ' may in some instance represent an original A.-Sax.
wir-grdf, 'myrtle grove.'
Warrington. — Apart from the Domesday rendering,
Walintune, which is probably an error, the earliest-found
spelling of the name of this town is in a document esti-
mated to be of the end of the twelfth century, which has
Weri?igton, i.e., the hin or settlement of the Wserings, mem-
bers of which clan also held estates at Werrington in Devon-
shire and Northampton, 'Wehringen and Weringhausen in
Germany, and perhaps at Varengreville in Normandy.
^ Baines, Lane, 1870, ii. 284.
2 Diet, of Place-names, 3rd ed., 1887.
' Names of Places, 2nd ed., 1872, p. 307.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 69
Waterloo. — Where it is indigenous, this place name
simply means ' the watery lea or meadow.' In the case of
the interesting Liverpool suburb it presents no etymological
significance. The place barely existed in 1835, and ulti-
mately rose into being round a hostelry called the Waterloo
Hotel. After Wellington's victory over Napoleon, the name
Waterloo became very popular, one of the principal bridges
over the Thames being christened from the Belgian battle-
place.
Wavertree. — Domesday has Wavretreu ; but the place
has also been anciently styled Wartre, Waudter, IFave,
Wavre, and even Wastpull and Wastyete. The editors of
Baines's 'Lancashire' (1870, ii. 267) were of the opinion
that "All these forms of the name bear unanimous testi-
mony to the barren, uncultivated nature of the district —
Wastyete, or Wastgate, the gate or road over the waste ;
Wastpull, the pool on the waste ; of both of which there
are remains to this day in the village green and the pool.
There is not a doubt that, until within a recent period, a
great part of Wavertree and the neighbourhood was unen-
closed and consequently uncultivated. So recently as 1769,
on Yates's map of the country round Liverpool, Childwall
Heath stretched from Wavertree to Woolton."
It is, however, manifestly incorrect to say that "«// these
forms of the name bear unanimous testimony to the barren,
uncultivated nature of the district." The terms Wastyete
and Wastpull can have absolutely nothing to do wuth
Wartre, Waudter, Wavre, etc., and were evidently either
simply alternative designations of the district under discus-
sion, or designations of different portions of it ; while the
latter group of names are clearly corruptions or contractions
of the Domesday rendering, Wavretreu, which is well pre-
served in the modern name. Canon Taylor, in his ' Words
and Places' (1864, p. 240), classified 'Wavertree' as a
Welsh name, and this allocation might have seemed to
receive some confirmation from the fact that a lithic circle
was discovered here, which has been thought to be Druidic;
but the common Southern Celtic tre, 'village,' is invariably a
prefix in accord with the genius of the Celtic tongues ;^ and
^ " In this township are found traces of very ancient inhabitants in
the Calder-stones, a small circle of diminutive monoliths on the S.E.
70 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
in his later work, 'Names and their Histories' (1896,
p. 377), the Canon has wisely transferred the name to the
simple English ' tree ' class. As to the probable meaning
of the first element of ' Wavertree,' I cannot, perhaps, do
better than quote a note which I have received from Pro-
fessor Skeat. " Chaucer," he says, "has wipple-tree for the
cornel-tree, meaning 'waving-tree,' and the A.-Sax. wcBfer =
always on the move, vibrating. And waver-tne would be a
splendid word for an aspen."
West Derby. — The mediaeval importance of this place
(Domesday, Derbei) is well testified by its giving a name
to one of the six hundreds of Lancashire. The midland
Derby, from which the Lancashire Derby has been dis-
tinguished by the addition of the prefix West, occurs in the
Saxon Chronicle as Deoraby, and it has been usual to con-
sider both places as being originally ' the location of wild
animals'— O. Nor. dyr (A.-Sax. dear— wihence Eng. deer —
Ger. ihier), ' (wild) beast,' combined with the customary
Scandinavian ' settlement ' or ' village ' sufifix, by{r), a deri-
vation which is not inconceivable, so far as the Lancashire
township is concerned, when we call to mind the forestral
nature of the district in olden times, and recollect that
(West) Dyrby, or Derby, seems to have been used as a kind
of centre at which hunting expeditions were organized ; but
it is, nevertheless, not improbable, considering how many
English bys have a personal appellation as their prefix, that
(West) Derby may have been given the name of its founder.
boundary of the township, and in the sepulchral remains which were
disinterred in 1867 by the men engaged to excavate the foundations of
two houses in Victoria Park. These remains consisted of eight cinerary
urns of coarse red-burnt clay, in which were human ashes. ... A
well-formed arrow-head, two scrapers, and other tools of flint, were
found in immediate proximity to the urns. The Calder-stones form a
circle about six yards in diameter, and consist of six stones, five of
which are still upright. They are of red sandstone, all different in size
and .shape."— Baines, Lane, 1870, ii. 267. Sir J. A. Picton refers to
these stones in the opening chapter of his Memorials of Liverpool ;
and the Wavertree residence of Sir John T. Brunner, Bart., M.P. —
' Druids' Cross ' — has so been designated from them. The word
'calder' is probably the A.-Sax. f;aldor, 'enchantment,' 'divination,'
'magic,' etc., occurring in such compounds as galdor-leoth, 'magic
song'; galdor-word, 'magic word,' 'incantation word.' Compare also
A.-Sax. galdere or galdar, ' wizard,' 'enchanter.'
HUNDRED Oh WEST DERBY 71
As Thorpe points out, in his glossary to 'Beowulf,' the word
deSr {dyr) applied to a warrior does not, as in modern usage,
imply reproach, any more than do the names Wulf, Biorn
(bear), Hengest (stallion), Horsa (horse), etc.
Whiston. — This name is a corruption of the A.-Sax.
hivit-stdn, 'white stone.'^ The old Whiston Hall and its
outbuildings, still to be seen, are built of white stone. The
same etymology applies to another Whiston — that near
Rotherham — where are large quarries of white stone. The
Lancashire Whiston occurs, in fact, in the Nonarum Inquisi-
tiones {temp. Edw. III.), fol. 40^, as Whitsta?i.
Widnes. — The spelling in 1285 was Vidnes : other later
renderings have been Wydnes and Wydness. This is gene-
rally taken to be ' the wide nose (or promontory) ' — O. Nor.
vidhr (Dan. and Swed. vid') ' wide' ; and nos or nes (Dan.
nase, Swed. ndsd) ' nose ' ; but as the Widnes promontory
does not seem to be particularly wide — at any rate, at the
present day — it is a moot point whether, instead of the
O. Nor. vidhr (' wide '), the O. Nor. vidhr (short/), meaning
' a wood ' — A.-Sax. wudu, Dan. red, Swed. vdd — was not the
original component. ^
Wigan. — The name of this town does not occur in
Domesday. Wygan is generally the ancient appellation,
and this has been referred to the A.-Sax. wigan, ' warriors,'
'soldiers' (sing. 7aiga ; wig, 'war,' 'battle'), tradition
averring that in this neighbourhood, on the banks of the
Douglas, King Arthur defeated the Saxons in several san-
guinary encounters.^ Whether this be so or not, the fact
remains that large quantities of bones of men and horses
have from time to time been turned up here.
Windle. — In Domesday, in the part relating to the land
between Ribble and Mersey — " Inter Ripam et Mersham" —
^Analogy: Chaucer's za/ies/on = whetstone — "A wlieston is no
kerving instrument." — Troil. and Cris., i. 631.
- Runcorn and Widnes practically form one town, but the former
does not, geographically, come within the defined scope of the present
monograph. It can, howe%'er, be stated that the name Runcorn occurs
in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the year 913, as RiinicSfa (the
oblique case is used, ' aet Rumcofan ') — A.-Sax. riiin, 'roomy,'
'spacious'; cofa, 'cove,' 'creek.'
^ See quotation from Higden's Polychronicon under Douglas.
72 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
occurs a Wibaldeslci, which would appear to embrace the
present townships of Windle, Whiston, Bold, Prescot, etc.
As, however, there is no place existing in Lancashire with a
name resembling Wibaldeslei, while there is a Wimboldsley
in Cheshire, I am prepared to go further than Beamont,
who thinks^ " it is possible that the name is misplaced here
[Lancashire]," and to assert that the entry of Wihaldeslei as
being " inter Ripam et Mersham," must, beyond doubt, be
a mistake on the part of a Norman scribe. As to Windle,
in the Testa de Nevill we find the spellings Wyndul (fol.
396) and Wyndel (398^). This may mean ' the pleasant
dale ' — A. -Sax. 7i>yn{?i)-dcel ;~ or the first syllable may be
from a personal name. See Winstanley, Winwick.
Winstanley. — There is but one place of this name in
Great Britain. It does not occur in Domesday, but in the
Testa de Nevill (fol. 406) we find JVinsta?ieleg' ; and in the
Survey of 13 20- 1346, Chetham Soc, vol. Ixxiv., 1868, we
have Wynsia?ileghe. There is no etymological difficulty as
to the latter portion of the name— A. -Sax. sidti, ' stone ';
ledh, 'lea,' ' leigh,' 'ley,' or ' meadowland ' (see Stanley);
but the ' win ' is a somewhat doubtful quantity. The whole
name Winstanley of course simply means ' the meadowland
belonging to W^instan,' which was a common enough proper
name. Thus, according to Domesday, a Saxon named
Winestan held our Walton in the time of the Con-
fessor ; in a charter of yEthelred's (a.d. 996)^ we have
** Wynstanes ham " (Wynstan's home) ; in one of Eadward's
{c. A.D. 910),^ " Winstanes stapol " (Winstan's pillar); a
" Winstan, minister," attests one of Bishop Denewulf's
charters (a.d. 879-909)''; and so on. But, as we have said,
it is a little difficult to trace the exact meaning of 7uin or
wyn here. It certainly cannot be the A.-Sax 7cnn, ' wine ';
it is scarcely likely to be, in this particular case, A.-Sax.
witie, 'friend,' or even A. -Sax. 'cvyn or wynn, 'pleasant,'
' beautiful ' ; and we may reject the AVelsh g7vyn (mutated
to wyn), 'white,' 'fair' (although the first element of
^ Domesday Cheshire and Lancashire, 1882, p. 75.
^ Compare wynn-land, 'the pleasant land,' in the ])oem of the
Phoenix, ascribed by .Sweet and others to the Northumbrian poet
Cynewulf.
* Codex Diplomalicus, vi. 137. ^ Ibid., v. 184. ^ Ibid., v, 163.
HUNDRED OF WEST DERBY 73
another Saxon name, Dunstan, is probably from the Wei.
dwn, ' dun,' ' dark ') ; and also the hypothesis of a corrup-
tion of ' Woden,' as in Winsborough. It is most likely
A. -Sax. wi?i or wiii?i, 'war.' Bosworth ('A. -Sax. Diet.,'
1838), quoting Lye ('Diet. Sax. etc.,' Manning's ed., 1772),
says that from this 7in'n we get the proper names Alwin, ' all
in war'; Baldwin, 'bold in war '; Eadwin, ' happy in war';
Godwin, ' good in war ' ; but it is pretty clear that win or
7C'ine as a termination in Saxon names is the A. -Sax. zvine,
'friend,' 'protector' — thus Leofwine = Beloved Friend.^
Florence of Worcester, under the year 992, records that
not long after the death of the blessed Oswald, Duke
vEthelwine, " friend of God," of distinguished memory,
passed away.^ As a prefix, however, win seems often to be
the A.-Sax. win, ivinn, ' war.' IVinstan would therefore
literally mean 'war-stone ' or 'battle-stone,' which may have
denoted a monument ; or it may have been an archaic term
for a battle-axe, or perhaps have indicated a war-(stone)
house, or castle. This literal rendering of ' battle-stone ' is
apparently confirmed by the occurrence of the personal
name Wigstan, which has the same meaning ; although
Miss Yonge" (who does not give Winstan) makes all her
win nominal prefixes represent ' friend ' only.
Winwick. — An old spelling is Wymoyc. This is pro-
bably ' the pleasant habitation ' — A.-Sax. wy7i ' pleasant ' ;
7C'/V, 'dwelling,' 'habitation,' 'village,' etc.: wynland, 'the
pleasant land,' ' the land of joy,' occurs in the poem of the
Phoenix, attributed by Sweet and others to Cynewulf.
Compare the word 'winsome.'
Woolston. — In mediaeval documents the spelling is
often Wolston, which form occurs in the Nonarum Inquisi-
tiones, temp. Edw. III., fol. 40, The name must be a
corruption of A.-Sax. Wulfes-tun — ' Wulf's farmstead.'
^ See Kemble's Names, Surnames, and Nic-names of the Anglo-
Saxons, Proceedings Archaiol. Inst. Gt. Eritain, 1846, p. 87 ; and Sir
J. A. Ficton's Proper Names in Philological and Ethnological Enquiries,
Proceedings Lit. and Phil. Soc. L'pool, vol. xx. (1865-66), p. 1S8.
- " Nee diu post excessum beati Oswaldi, egregice dux memorias
/Ethelwinus, Dei Aniictis, defunctus est." — Elorentius Wigorniensis,
Thorpe's ed., 1848, i. 149.
' History of Christian Names, 1884.
74 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
V7oolton. — This name is literally a wolf in sheep's
clothing : it has nothing in common with the hair of the
well-known animal any more than that of Woolwich has.
Little Woolton is identified with the Domesday Ulventune^
and Much Woolton with the Domesday Uvetone. Local
historians have presumed from these names that the district
at the time of the Saxon (or Norse) settlement was infested
by wolves (A. -Sax. tvulf, O. Nor. ulfr^ Dan.-Norw. ulv,
Swed. itlf^ ' wolf) ; but there is little doubt that Ulvejitune
and Uvetone were originally the Wins or farmsteads of a
proprietor bearing the common Teutonic name Wulf or
Ulf. Wolvesey, a little island near Winchester, was,
however, the scene of the annual payment of the Welsh
tribute of wolves' heads.
II.— HUNDRED OF WIRRAL.
Arrowe (fourteenth century, Arwe), like Landican, its
near neighbour, may with comparative safety be deemed a
relic of Celtic nomenclature — Wei. ern>, ' acre,' ' piece of
ploughland '; connected with Lat. aro, Gr. dpow, A.-Sax.
erian, ' to plough '; and hence Eng. * arable.'
Backford. — The first element is DanoSaxon for
' brook ' — O. Nor. bekkr, Dan.-Norw. biek, Swed. biick,
Nor. Eng. beck, Ger. bach.
Barnston. — The Domesday spelling is Bernestone ;
while in early charters the name also occurs as Bermston,
and Bernstotie, as well as Barnston, the present day render-
ing. It may possibly be due to a combination of a common
Norse personal appellation meaning ' a bear,' viz., Biorn
(genit. sing. Biarnar), with the O. Nor. stemn, 'a stone'
(monument) ; but it is much more probable that the place
was originally the iun or farmstead of a Saxon settler named
Beorn (genit. sing, or possess. Beornes), an appellation
denoting ' one bold in war.'
Bebington. — This was a branch iun or settlement of
the Saxon Bobbing family.^
Bidston. — The name of this place is found in 1272 as
Byddeston. There is little doubt that the first element here
represents the patronymic borne by the Saxon owner
of the original tun or farmstead, although I place on record
the suggestion of local archaeologists that, as a runic stone
has been found at Upton (about two miles from Bidston)
containing the A. -Sax. verb biddan, ' to pray,' the name of
1 Birch's ed. (1876) of Kemble's Saxons in England, i. 457.
76 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
the township is an attenuated form of biddende-stdm, ' pray-
ing-stone.'
Birkenhead. — Ormerod's " head of the River Birken "^
having been satisfactorily disposed of by local antiquaries,
it is easy to fall back upon the obvious — birken-head, ' head
or promontory of the birches' — O. Nor. biork, A.-Sax. birce,
' birch'; O. Nor. hofud, A. -Sax. hcd/od, 'head.' Hence the
name Woodside. Birkenhead is not mentioned in Domesday.
The earliest recorded spellings of the name are : Birkefi-
heved, jBirkhe/ied, Byrkehed, Birchened, Byrchened, Byrken-
hed, Byrkehe?ied, Birkynhede, etc.
Blacon. — The Domesday spelling is Blachehol, which in
later times seems to have been corrupted into Blaken.
With the Norman ch as usual equating k^ Blachehol clearly
represents ' black hole ' — A.-Sax. blac, ' black,' and hoi,
'hole,' 'hollow.' A connection with the A.-Sax. bide
(i) 'bright, (2) 'bleak,' would scarcely be appropriate.
Brimstage. — This name occurs in early documents as
Brimstath and Brynstath (and even Bryfisfon), indicating
that this was the stead or place — O. Nor. stathr (A.-Sax.
stede) — settled by a Norseman named Brun or Bryn — O. Nor.
brihin (A.-Sax. brihi, Scand. brun), ' brown,' ' dark.' This
personal name frequently occurs in early charters. See Bryn
and Bromborough.
Bromborough. — Before attempting to deal with the
etymology of this name, it is necessary to consider the
evidence for and against the identification of Bromborough
with the Brunanburh around {ymbe) which ^^ithelstan, in
A.D. 937, achieved his great victory over the allied Danes,
Irish, Scots, and Welsh. The site of the battle of Brun-
anburh has long been a subject of controversy, but until
comparatively recently the claims of Bromborough to be
considered the scene of the sanguinary conflict, probably
owing to the former secludedness and insignificance of the
township, have scarcely been thought worth discussing.
Thus Gibson merely mentioned the fact that there was a
place in Cheshire called ' Brunburh,'- a statement which
' Chesh., 1819, ii. 254.
^ " Oppidum est in agro Cestrensi hodie Brunburh dictum." —
Chronicon Saxoiiicum, 1692.
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 77
Bosworth ('A.-Sax. Diet.,' 1838) repeats. Thorpe, in his
edition of the Saxon Chronicle (1861), was unable to locate
Brunanhurh ; so was Earle in his {1865); but Plummer,
re-editing Earle's edition in 1889, queries the county of
Durham, as advocated in Bosworth and Toller's ' A.-Sax.
Diet.' (1882), and prefers, with Powell, to think that the
battle was fought in Lancashire. Thomas Baines, however,
in 'Lancashire and Cheshire, Past and Present,' 1867,
i. 316, was of the opinion that it took place near Brom-
borough in Wirral.
Some correspondence on the subject is to be found in
the Athencuwi of the second half of 1S85. In the issue of
that journal for August 15, 1885, p. 207, Dr. R. F. Wey-
mouth entertains no doubt that Bromborough in Cheshire
is Brunanburh, and he speaks of " traces of a great battle in
that neighbourhood." In the issue for August 22, 1885,
p. 239, the Rev. T. Cann-Hughes points out that the ques-
tion has been discussed in the Cheshire Sheaf, that Mr.
John Layfield shows that on the Ordnance Survey for
Bromborough parish the ' Wargreaves ' is mentioned as the
site of a battle between ^thelstan and the Danes in 937,
and that in the Proceedi?igs of the Chester Archceological
Society (vol. ii.) there is a paper by the secretary, Mr.
Thomas Hughes, in which it is stated that about 910 the
Princess ^thelfleda built a fortress at Brimsbury, which is
identified by local authorities with Bromborough. Another
contributor to this correspondence, however, asserts Brunan-
burh to be in Dumfries-shire ; another claims it to be near
Axminster, while Mr. Herbert Murphy, writing in the
Athenmwi of October 3, 1885, p. 436, thinks that Mr.
Hardwick, in his 'Ancient Battlefields in Lancashire'
(1882), has made out an irresistible case in favour of the
country round Bamber Bridge, just south of Preston and
the Ribble, stress being rightly laid on the discovery, in
1840, in this locaHty of the famous Cuerdale collection of
coins.
On the other hand, Dr. Birch, in his ' Cartularium Sax-
onicum' (1885, etc.), ii. viii., maintains that Brunan-burh is
a poetical alliteration for Brinnnga feld, which occurs in a
Latin charter of King ^thelstan, a.d. 938 (' Cart. Sax.,'
ii. 435), and, arguing that an English Broomfield or Brom-
78 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
field must supply the site of the conflict, he suggests Broom-
field in Somersetshire. I must confess that this portion of
Dr. Birch's reasoning does not convince me. Brunnan-
burh or Brunan-burh may be a form in which historical
accuracy is sacrificed to poetical demands ; but the fact
that a charter refers casually to the battle having been
fought at or in Bruninga-feld need not count for much.
This name strikes one as a generalization, meaning simply
'the plain of the Brunings,' i.e., of the descendants of
Brun ; and, in fact, this occurrence of Bruninga-feld might
seem to some to tend to the confirmation of the theory that
Cheshire witnessed the battle of Brunanburh, for in this
county we have, in comparative contiguity, at least three
places which may owe their name to an eponymic Brun —
namely, Bromborough (formerly Brunborough, Brunbree,
etc.), Brimstage (formerly Brunstath), and Brinnington.
Besides, as to Bruninga-feld representing a modern Brom-
field or Broomfield (Bartholomew's Gazetteer gives three
Bromfields and five Broomfields in England), it must not
be overlooked that a sharp labial, as/ is, is not so liable to
convert a preceding n into m as a flat labial like /^ is ;
and a Bromfield or Broomfield, just the same as a Bromley
or Brompton, may generally be taken to imply a place which
was overrun with broom.
In the map entitled ' Die Britischen Inseln bis auf
Wilhelm den Erobcrer, 1066,' in the Spruner-Menke 'Hand-
Atlas fiir die Geschichte des Mittelalters ' (1880), Brunan-
burh is placed on the ' Meresige ' in about the present
position of Bromborough. A gentleman who has given
much study to the question on the spot, the Rev. E. D.
Green, Rector of Bromborough, wrote to Mr. Helsby, the
editor of Ormerod ('Hist. Chesh.,' 1882, ii. 427): "A
large tract of land near the seashore at Bromborough has
long been known by the name of IVargraves. This fact,
and that of the recent discovery (June, 1877) of a large
number of skeletons near the coast of the Dee, a few miles
further off, with other circumstances, combine to prove that
this parish was the unquestionable^site of ^thelstan's famous
victory over the Danes and their allies in 937."
There are one or two other points which would appear
to add strength to the theory of the Battle of Brunanburh
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 79
having been fought in Cheshire. In the first place it is
probable — given the actual existence of a Brunanburh —
that there was but one Brunanburh in England in a.d. 937,
just as there is but one Bromborough to-day. Secondly,
the Dee and the Mersey, whose estuaries are divided by
the Wirral Peninsula, have, from time immemorial, been the
favourite points of embarkation for and debarkation from
Ireland ; it is, indeed, tolerably certain that the first Irish
missionaries to visit England landed in Wirral.^ Thirdly,
we know that a considerable Norse and Danish population
had already settled in Wirral when Anlaf's ships crossed the
Irish sea, and the Hiberno-Danish king could surely reckon
upon the support of his fellow-countrymen.
The fact that certain land at Bromborough is known as
the Wargraves is, however, of no significance. The Early
English werre^ ' war ' (if that be the word intended), was
not in use at the time of the battle, 7vig being the ordinary
A.-Sax. word, and the one used in the poem-chronicle^
itself. The A.-Sax. grcrf (pi. gncfas) — whence Mod. Eng.
'grave' — certainly meant 'trench,' 'ditch,' or 'pit'; but
without evidence of early spelling it is not safe to say what
the war in Wargraves positively represents. (Is it the
A.-Sax. warn, 'defence,' or A.-Sax. wcer^ 'sea,' or A.-Sax.
waroth, 'shore,' or A.-Sax. wer, 'fishing-place'?) Besides,
the terminations ^/-az'tf ^wdi graves in place-names are usually
attributable to A.-Sax. graf (pi. gnifas), ' grove.' But see
Wargrave in the West Derby Section.
The question may now be asked. Is the available evidence
fairly conclusive in favour of Bromborough being Brunan-
burh ? I am afraid that the answer must be that it is not.
And for this reason, namely, that the indefatigable re-
searches of Mr. T. T. Wilkinson'^ and Mr. Chas. Hardwick,-*
combined with the Cuerdale find of coins, leave scarcely
room for doubt that the great battle of a.d. 937 was fought
in the northern portion of that principal part of Lancashire
^ See Helsby's ed. Oimerod's Hist. Chesh., 1882, ii. 486.
- The reader scarcely needs to be reminded of Tennyson's metrical
version of the Battle of Brunanburh.
^ Transactious I list. Soc. Lane, and Chesh., 1S56-57, pp. 21 sqij.
■• Hist, of Preston, 1857 ; and Ancient Batllcliekis in Lancashire,
1882.
8o LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
which Hes between Ribble and Mersey. Mr. Wilkinson
makes out a very good case for the neighbourhood of
Burnley, which is on the river Brun,^ and was formerly
known as Brunley, while close by are Saxifield and Danes
House. Mr. Hardwick argues for the district south of
Preston, and points to such names as Bamber and Brindle.
A theory reconciling these two diverse views would make
out that the battle was actually fought at or near Burnley,
that the defeated Danes and Irish were pursued to their
ships in the Ribble, and that, when that river was reached,
the chest constituting the Cuerdale find had to be hurriedly
buried to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy.
The Cuerdale treasure-trove, it may be recalled, consisted
of (besides ingots, etc.) some 10,000 silver coins enclosed
in a chest. The greater number of the coins were Danish ;
a large number were Anglo-Saxon, and a smaller number
were French, the remainder being made up of Italian and
Oriental pieces. ^ The fact that specially interests us now,
however, is that a/l these coins ivere minted between a.d. 815
and A.D. 930, and they must consequently have been in-
humed within a comparatively short period after the latter
date, that is to say, about the time of the Battle of Brunan-
burh. Worsae remarks,^ with needless caution, that "the
treasure must have been buried in the first half of the tenth
century."
As we have therefore decided that Bromborough is not
Brunanburh, it will be as well to note the early forms of
the name Bromborough as they are given by Mr. Green,
who writes -^ " In 912 we have it ' Brimburgh,' and before
the Conquest it is ' Brunsburg,' ' Brunnesburgh,' and
' Brimesburgh ' ; in 1152 ' Brunborough ' ; tern. Pope
Honorius, ' Brumbure ' ; tern. Edward I. (in its charter)
' Brumburgh ' and ' Bromburgh ' ; in 1291 ' Bromborch ' ;
in 1548 ' Brombrogh,' 'Brumburgh,' and ' Brumborowe ' ;
tern. Eliz. ' Brumbrow ' ; in 17 19 ' Brombrough,' and since
^ It should be noted that in the Annales Cambria; we have "Bellum
Brune," and in the Brut y Tywysogion, or Chronicle of the (Welsh)
Princes, "Ac y bu ryfel Brun"— " And the Battle of Brun took place."
' See the Ntimismatic Chronicle (Journal of the Numismatic Soc. ),
1842-43, pp. 1-120, with ten plates.
' Danes and Norwegians in England, 1852, p. 49.
^ Helsby's Ormerod's Hist. Chesh., 1882, ii. 427.
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 8i
' Bromborough ' (pron. Brumbo rough)." The pre-Conquest
forms point to the personal name Erun^ — A. -Sax. brihi, or
O. Nor. hriiim, 'brown,' 'dark' — combined with A.-Sax.
biirh or burg, or (J. Nor. borg, 'castle,' 'fortress';- and I
am therefore unable to agree with Mr. Irvine's derivation of
the first element of 'Bromborough,'^ viz., O. Nor. brunnr,
' well,' ' spring.' See Brimstage (Wirral Hundred) and
Bryn (West Derby Hundred).
Burton. — This is a common English place-name, which
Taylor says (' Names and their Histories,' p. 79) "is usually
from the A.-Sax. bi'/r-ti'oi, which denoted a f/hi or farmyard
containing a bur or ' bower,' the word bur meaning a ' store-
house ' in O. Nor., and in A.-Sax. a 'chamber,' 'sleeping
place,' or building of some kind " ; but, as I have pointed
out to Canon Taylor (who writes that he cannot affirm that
my point is wrong), this explanation of the name seems
lame on the face of it, for surely every farmstead, ancient
or modern, must of necessity have possessed or possesses
accommodation of this kind. The difficulty is got over, I
think, by taking the bur in the bur-tuns to represent not an
apartment but a husbandman, tiller of the soil, working
farmer, corresponding to the Du. boer, Ger. bauer, Platt-
Ueutsch buur., from the first of which our lexicographers,
including Skeat, have derived the Eng. 'boor,' whereas
' boor ' has a continuous history in England, from A.-vSax.
iyge) bur onwards through Middle English, and it is found
in ' neighbour,' originally ' the near farmer.' See Bosworth-
ToUer's 'A.-Sax. Diet.,' and Stratmann-Bradley's ' M. E.
Diet.', s.v. The bur seems to have been near akin to the
ccorl. The synonymy of mod. boor and churl apparently
proves this. Taylor enumerates some 60 Burtons and
77 Carltons, Charltons, and Chorltons — not a very wide
divergence.
^ Brunswick in Germany, formerly Brtines7uic, represents ' Bruno's
habitation.'
- It is curious to note that, while the A.-Sax. Inirg, originally
signifying an isolated stronghold (from A.-Sax. beorgan, 'to protect'),
acquired the signification of 'city' at a very early period, the Scand.
/'^/y still largely tends to retain its primary meaning of 'castle,' 'fort,'
'palace.' This is, of course, due to the vastly different economic
conditions which have prevailed in England and Scandinavia.
3 Transactions Hist. Soc. Lane, and Chesh., 1S91-92, pp. 279 sqq.
6
82 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
In the Laws of Ine (a king of Wessex), sec. ' Be gefeoh-
tum ' (Fights), it is interesting to note how the scale of
punishment fluctuates according as the brawl takes place
in the king's palace, an abbey, a nobleman's or high official's
residence, or the homes of the taxpayer and the 1>ook
Sir Henry Ellis points out^ that Lord Coke calls the
Bordarii of Domesday ^'/^oors holding a little house with
some land of husbandry, bigger than a cottage " ; and Sir
Henry further observes :- " The Bures, Buri, or Burs are
noticed in the first volume of Domesday as synonymous
with Coliberti. . . . The name of the Coliberti was un-
questionably derived from the Roman Civil Law. They are
described by Lord Coke as tenants in free socage by free rent."
Oaldy. — Domesday has Calders, which may refer to the
two Caldys — Great and Little. Caldy is Scandinavian for
' bleak island ' — O. Nor. kald{r) (Dan. kold^ Swed. kall)^
' bleak, ' ' cold ' ; ey, ' island ' ; — but as Caldy can scarcely
be called an island — at any rate at the present day — this is
probably an instance where O. Nor. ej>, as is sometimes the
case with A. -Sax. ?§■ ( = iy), represents a place beside water
rather than land entirely surrounded by water.
Capenhurst occurs in Domesday as Capeles, which is
Old l'"rench (Low Lat. capella) for ' chapels '; but ' Capen-
hurst ' makes its appearance early in the fourteenth century.
The ' hurst ' (A. -Sax. hyrst, ' wood ') is, seemingly, a post-
Domesday suffix, and the present name, although Mr. Irvine^
thinks it may represent " the brushwood where the capon
was reared," would appear to be simply a corruption of, or
false analogy for, Capelhurst (or Cape/shurst), ' the wood by
the chapel (or chapelsj.' "The township," wrote Ormerod,*
" is judiciously broken by plantations."
Chester was the Deva of the Romans, from the name of
1 Introduction to Domesday, 1816, xxvi.
- Ibid., xxvii. See also Birch's ed. (1876) of Kemble's Saxons in
England, i. 131, 215, 216, 225, 226 ; and Seebohm, English Village
Community, 1884, pp. 131 sqq. Prof. Maitland says: — " Next above
the sa-vi we see the small but interesting class of burs." — Domesday
Book and Beyond, 1897, p. 36.
•* Transactions Hist. Soc. Lane, and Chesh., 1891-92, pp. 2']() sqq.
* Chesh., 1819, ii. 314.
HUNDRED OF IVIRRAL 83
its river (see Dee).^ It was long the headquarters of the
famous Twentieth Legion, and became known as Castrum
Legionis, or Castra Legionis, ' fort ' or ' camp of the legion,'
and Civitas Legionuiii, ' city of the legions.' The Britons
called it Caer Llcon — Wei. caer, ' fort,' ' city '; Ikon, formed
from legione, the ablative case of Lat. legto, ' legion.' The
Saxons in their turn styled it Legaceaster, 'the legion Chester'
(A.-Sax. ceasfer, ' city,' from Lat. castra, ' camp '). In the
Saxon Chronicle, in the portion dealing with Alfred's wars
with the Danes, we read (a.d. 894) that the latter "gedydon
on anre westre ceastre on Wfrhealum seo is Legaceaster
gehaten " (arrived at a waste Chester in Wirral which is
called Legaceaster)." The prefix was eventually dropped.
Childer Thornton. — This place is not mentioned in
Domesday. The name has suffered no alteration in the
course of centuries. Saxon Thorntons (tuns or farmsteads
which took their name from the thorn-bush) are common
enough in England, but this is the only one with the prefix
C/ii/der, which is the Mdle. Eng. nominative and genitive
plural of cliild-e (A.-Sax. cild). ' Childe,' in the Middle
Ages, was a title of honour borne by the sons of noblemen —
as a rule until they attained the rank of knighthood. The
term is familiar to readers of the present day through Byron's
' Childe Harold.' In local names it seems to have survived
in Child's Wickham (Glouc), Child's Hill (M'sex.), Child's
Ercall (Salop), Childerley (Cambs.), etc. Bardsley, in his
' Enghsh Surnames ' (pp. 202, 534), quotes from mediaeval
records such names as Ralph le Child, Walter le Child,
Roger le Childe, etc. It is not probable that the above-men-
tioned place-names have anyconnection (as somehave hinted)
with the O. Nor. kelda, Dan.-Norw. kildc, 'well,' 'spring.'
Cliorlton. — The Chorltons in England are not so
numerous as the paronymous Charltons and (Nor. Eng.)
1 "How Deva came to be the name of Chester or the Castra
Legionis (whence the Welsh Caer Lleoti) is not clear ; possibly it was
at first the camp Ad Devam, or ' by the Dee.' " — Rhys, Celtic Britain,
1884, p. 292.
^ " Civitatem Legionitm, tunc temporis desertam, quae Saxonice
Legeceaster dicitur . . . intrant." — Florence of Worcester, a.d. 894.
And " Civitas quK Karle-^ion Britannice. et Legeceastre dicitur Saxonice."
—tlbuL, A.D. 908.
84 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Carltons — A. -Sax. ceor/ (Eng. c/mr/), Scand. kar/, ' common
man,' ' fellow.' The Carltons, Chailtons, and Chorltons,
like the Hintons, were originally no doubt, as a rule, the
living-places allotted to the agricultural and pastoral helpers
on a large estate, but it is probable that some were little fihis
or farmsteads cultivated independently by small freemen.
Claughton was formerly called Claghton, Claightoti, and
Claytofi, names evidently due to the large beds of clay
(A.-Sax. dc'eg) found in the township.
Croughton or Croghton.— It is somewhat difficult to
give with certainty the meaning of the first element of this
rather uncommon Saxon place-name. Did the name, as
appears most likely, signify originally ' the crook or crooked
ti'ni,' or rather ' the iiin in the crook, bend, or corner ' —
Mdle. Eng. crok, croc, O. Nor. krokr (Dan.-Norw. krog,
Swed. krok), ' anything crooked,' ' nook ' or ' corner '? Or
did saffron (A.-Sax. croh) perhaps grow there? Or was
crockery (A.-Sax. croc, crog, crogh) made there? See Crox-
TETH in the West Derby section. Croughton is the Domes-
day Crostone, the s, as in Lesto7ie = Leighton, being the
Norman representation of the Saxon guttural.
Dee. — It has been usual to consider that the Celtic name
of this river, and of others similarly designated, represented
'dark (water)' — Wei. d/i (dee), Gael. d/i/>/i (duv, doo), ' black,'
' dark ' (see Douglas in the West Derby section), just as
the Don rivers were considered referable either to Gael.
doimJine, * deep,' or donn, 'dark brown ';^ but Professor Rhys
has a more elaborate explanation. The word Deva, he says,^
"originally denoted 'the river,' or rather 'the goddess of
the river,' for Deva is only the feminine corresponding to
a masculine devo-s, ' a god ' ; but when the old terminations
were dropped dcvos and deva assumed the same form, and
this, according to rule, yielded in Old Welsh doiu or duiu"
The modern Welsh name of the Dee is Afo7i [river] Dyfrdivy.
^ See a paper, ' Place-names of Scotland,' by the late Prof. Blackie,
in Blackwood for July, 1894, in which the following works are passed
in review: (1) Scottish Land Names, by Sir Herbert Maxwell, 1894;
(2) Place-names of Scotland, by Rev. Jas. B. Johnston, 1892 ; (3)
Place-names of Argyllshire, by Prof. Mackinnon, in the Scotsman, 1888 ;
(4) Place-names of Strathbogie, by Jas. MacDonald, 1891.
^ Celtic Britain, 1884, p. 291.
HUNDRED OF WTRRAL 85
Eastham. — The Domesday spelling of the name of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's " finest old English village I have
seen " is Estham. It has been suggested with probability
that this Anglo-Saxon havim} or extent of land, was so
named because it lay in an easterly direction from the
settlement — Willaston — whence the Norman name of the
Hundred of Wirral was derived.
Egremont. — This place, like its neighbour. New
Brighton, is modern, and it takes its name indirectly from
the ancient Cumberland Egremont, a name which originally
denoted the castle built on an artificial mount by a Norman
grantee soon after the Conquest. Egremont signifies ' the
bold mount ' — O. Fr. egre (Lat. acer), ' bold ' ; nwnt,
' mount.' Wordsworth has a poem entitled ' The Horn
of Egremont Castle.' The Cumberland Egremont is referred
to in a Latin charter temp. King John as Acrimons?
Ellesmere. — Ellesmere Port is situated at the mouth
of the canal which commences at the Ellesmere in Shrop-
shire whence our little port borrowed its name. In ' Elles-
mere ' we have the same personal appellation that figures
in the Derbyshire ' Alsop,' which in t)omesday was written
EJlesJwpe. As in the case of Liverpool and Hoylake, the
Salopian town has taken the name of the sheet of water
upon whose shores it has risen into being.
Fender. — This is the old name of two streams in
Wirral, upon the northernmore of which the Ordnance
Survey, for some reason, has bestowed the new appellation
of Birket. The meaning of ' Fender ' here is rather obscure.
Some have gone so far as to connect the latter element of
the name with the Wei. divr, ' water ' ; others observe in
the former element the A. -Sax. and O. Nor. fen, ' mud.'
Seeing, however, that the Wirral farmers seem to call any
kind of large ditch or drain a fender, it is not improbable
that the term is of comparatively modern origin, and was
primarily used for the reason that the streams were fenders,
i.e.^ protectors, against inundations, which were formerly
^ A. -Sax. ha//i{i>i), 'enclosure,' is distinct from A. -Sax. hain, 'home,'
which is generally affixed to a personal name. See Leo, Die Angel-
sachsischen Ortsnamen (Rectitudines Singularum Per.sonarum), llalle,
1842, pp. 27 sqq. ; and Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus, iii. xxvii., xxviii.
* Jefterson, Hist, and Antiquities of Cumberland, ii. (1842) 24.
86 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
much more prevalent in Wirral than at the present day.
Shiices are sometimes called fenders in England (see the
' Hist. Eng. Diet.,' s.v. ' Fender ').
Frankby. — This Norse name, omitted in Domesday,
may well be supposed to indicate a h' or settlement of a
Frank or Franks. See a footnote under Gayton.
Gayton. — This place occurs in Domesday as Gaitone.
I was at first, despite the characteristic Anglo-Saxon termi-
nation of the name, inclined to think that the tun or
settlement, like many of the contiguous townships, was of
Norse foundation, and that the first element of the name
was referable (i) to the O. Nor. gata (A.-Sax. geaf,a.s in Gates-
head,^ Highgate, etc.), 'thoroughfare,' 'way,' 'road,' in
allusion to the fact that Gayton is situated on the direct
road, on the western or Norse side, between the northern
and southern ends of the Wirral Peninsula, i.e., between
West Kirkby and Shotwick ; or perhaps (2) to the O. Nor.
gei'f" (A.-Sax. gat), ' goat,' which occasionally occurs in
place-names ; and, again, I judged it not impossible that
the hamlet might have been founded by a Gedt or Gaut{r),
i.e., Goth, from Southern Sweden, just as Frankby may
owe its name to a Frankish immigrant or immigrants.^
^ A curious history attaches to the name Gateshead. Bede, by what
we must consider to be a remarkable error, translated Gdiesheved by
Caput Caprcv (Goat's Head), although the classical genitive singular of
A. -.Sax. gat, 'goat,' is gate ox gcete, not gates ; and the error has been
perpetuated through .Somner (Diet. Sax.-Lat.-Angl., 1659), Bosworth
(A.-S. Diet., 1838), and even Toller (ed. Bosworth's A.-S. Diet.,
1882, etc.), and Canon Taylor (Names and their Hist., 1896) down to
the present day. The name is, there seems little doubt (des])ite the
analogy of other "animal-head" names), referable to the A.-Sax. grat,
gat, or gat (genit. sing, gates), (i) 'gate,' 'door'; (2) 'street,' 'road,'
' passage,' and means ' the head or end of the road.' Mr. Richardson,
Librarian to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-on-
Tyne, writes to me : " I think your explanation of the name of
Gateshead is the correct one. . . . The road of which it was the head
is the Roman road from Chester-le-.Slreet, which terminated at Gates-
head."
^ O. Nor. ei = O. Eng. d, not as pronounced in Southern England,
like a in ' father,' but as pronounced in Northern England and Scot-
land, i.e., the Scandinavian-infected jiarts, like a in 'gate.'
•' In Saxon poems of i:)resumed Scandinavian or Anglian origin
Swedes and Goths, and also Franks and Frisians, .are mentioned
together in a similar manner to the Picts and Scots. Thus in "that
HUNDRED OF WJRRAL 87
On the whole, however, it would appear that Gayton was
merely a Saxon goat-farm. We have the analogy of Gatton,
in Surrey, which is mentioned in the Will of Duke /T'^lfred
(a.d. 871-889)^ as Gataiun — A.-'&?iX. gdia, genit. pi. of gdl,
' goat.' A gdta-hus was a goat-house.
GrOwy. — The name of the river at the southern end of
the Wirral peninsula is clearly connected with the Welsh
g7C'y, ' water. '-
GrGasby. — This Norse-looking name seems really to be
of Saxon origin, for it occurs in Domesday as Gravcsherie.
The A. -Sax. grcef^ (O. Nor. grof), the genitive singular of
which is grfffes, meant (i) 'trench,' 'ditch'; (2) 'grave';
while A. -Sax. grdf (genit. sing, grdfes) signified ' grove.'
Gravesberie, and therefore Greasby, must, however, simply be
the A.-Sax. Grcefes-burh, * the castle of Gr^ef.' Such pa-
tronymics as Graves, Groves, and Trench are common
enough to-day.
Hargrave. — Domesday has Haregrave. The name
might seem to indicate that considerable earthworks were
here thrown up by the usurping Scandinavians. The
O. Nor. her-grdf (Dan. kcpr-grav, Swed. hdr-graf) may be
construed as ' military trench '; other similar O. Nor. com-
pounds include her-floti, ' war-fleet '; her-fblk, ' war-people ';
her-klcedhi, 'war-clothing,' i.e., 'armour,' the O.Y^ox. herr
(A.-Sax. here., Ger. heer) primarily signifying 'host,' 'army.'
As to the easy phonetic interchange of her and har compare
the various Hardwicks (cattle stations) in England, the first
element of the name usually being the A.-Sax. heard, ' herd';
and Hertford = Hartford or Harford, Derby = Darby, Berk-
ancient and curious nomenclature of persons and places," The Scop or
Gleeman's Tale, we read "mid Sweom and mid Geatum " — with the
Swedes and Goths; while in Beowulf occurs "under Froncum and
Frysum " — amoncj the Franks and Frisians ; and in The ScAp' or
Gleeman's Tale, attain, " mid Froncum . . . and mid Frysum " — with
the Franks and Frisians.
^ Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus, ii. 120 ; Thorpe, Diplomatarium
Anglicum, p. 480 ; Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, ii. igt;.
^ Prof. Kuno INIeyer (The Voyage of Bran : an Old Irish Saga,
1896-7, i. 38) says that perhaps the obscure Ir. //a is cognate with
Wei. s^c'V, and means 'water.'
^ At the end of syllables and between two vowels A.-Sax. /= 7j.
88 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
shire = Barkshire, etc.^ Again, the prefix har in place-
names in Danish-settled parts of England may sometimes
be the O. Nor. hdr,^ ' high '; and ijerhaps O. Nor. /larr
(A.-Sax. //dr), 'hoary,' 'grey.' (See Greasby.) But in the
case of Hargrave we think we must agree with Canon Bard-
sley,^ that it represents simply ' the hare grove ' — A.-Sax.
Mra, Scand. /mre, ' hare '; A.-Sax. grdf, ' grove ' — just as
Congreve means ' the coney (rabbit) grove.'
Heswall. — The name of this township occurs in Domes-
day as Eswelle ; but in the thirteenth century we have
HaselweU, and Ormerod, in 1819, calls it Haselwall. The
name doubtless originally signified ' the field or plain of the
hazels ' — O. Nor. hasl, 'hazel,' plus the usual O. Nor. v'dllr
(dat. sing, velli), ' field.'
Hilbre (Island). — It is really superfluous to add ' Island '
after Hilbre, which contains the old word for ' island ' in
itself. The ancient name was Hildhurgheye^ i.e., ' the isle of
Hildburgha ' — O. Nor. ey, ' island.'^
Hoose. — The name of this little extra-parochial town-
ship is derived from the plural of A.-Sax. ho (hoo) = ' hough '
or ' heel ' (of land). See Hooton.
Hooton. — Domesday spelling, HotoJU, ' the tihi or farm-
stead on the hough or heel of land ' — A.-Sax. ho, ' heel,'
'hough.' Kemble says:^ "Originally a point of land,
formed like a heel, or boot, and stretching into the plain ;
perhaps even into the sea."
Hoylake. — The name of this favourite golfing resort
has this much in common with that of Liverpool— in both
' William Mitford, in his Harmony in Language, published in 1S04,
says (p. 24) : " A fashion has been growing to pronounce the word
tnerchant (formerly written as spoken, marchant, from the French
marchanJ) as if it were written murchant. Here, as in some other
instances, the corruption of orthography has tended to the corruption
of pronunciation."
^ O. Nor. a is really a diphthong representing a -f u, pron. on
or oii).
3 English .Surnames, 5th ed., 1897, p. 120.
^ As an instance of what can be done in quite modern times in the
way of wilfully corrupting land-names, it may be mentioned that in
Bacon's Geological Map of England and Wales (1891) this island is
called Elhoroui^h !
^ Codex Diplomaticus, iii. xxxi.
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 89
cases the appellation of a piece of water has eventually been
bestowed upon a village on its banks. As to the Hoyle
Lake, Ormerod says ■} " The adjacent lake, antiently called
'Lacus de Hilburgheye,' and ' Heye-pol ' . . . derives its
present name from two large sandbanks, which afford in
stormy weather a salutary refuge to the vessels frequenting
the port of Liverpool . . . the blending of the two lights
[Bidston and Leasowe] being the signal that the vessel is
right for Hoyle Lake." Having in view the Leasowe sub-
marine forest, a wandering philologist might be tempted to
assert that ' Hoyle ' is the Gael, coill or choill (pron. hoyle),
'a wood'; but it is no doubt simply the Nor. Eng. hoyle =
'hole,' 'hollow' (in this case a hollow filled with water),
' lake ' being added to the name when the signification of
hoyle had been forgotten. In the South Lancashire dialect
" long becomes sometimes ow — now for Jio ; sometimes
oy— hoyle for hole."'- Nodal and Milner,^ and also Holland,^
have hoivle but not hoyle in their respective glossaries ; but
there is no question of the former, if not of the present, exis-
tence of the form hoyle.
Irby. — "Hugh Lupus granted this township as 'the
manor of Erby in Wirhalle,' in his charter to the Abbey of
St. Werburgh in 1093."^ The name of this Norse l>yr or
settlement is apparently eponymous. Says Taylor :° " From
the common Scandinavian name of Ivar or Ingvar we have
Jurby in the Isle of Man, formerly Ivorby, Irby in Lincoln-
shire and in Yorkshire."
Landican. — Domesday spelling, Lafidcchene . As the
existence of a very ancient church is traced here, Mr.
Irvine'^ had no difficulty in taking the first element of the
name to be the common Welsh ecclesiastical Han, and, fol-
lowing a usual canon, the latter half to be the patronymic
of a saint, in this case that of a holy person long forgotten.
But I think we have here, instead of the Welsh llaii, its
1 Chesh., 1819, ii. 273.
- Picton, South Lancashire Dialect, Proceedings Lit. and Phil. Soc.
L'p"t)l, vol. xix. (1S64-65), p. 47.
3 Lancashire Glossary, Eng. Dial. Soc, 1875-82.
* Cheshire Glossary, Eng. Dial. Soc, 1S84-86.
^ Ormerod, Chesh., 1819, ii. 280.
^ Names and their Histories, 1896, p. 351.
^ Transactions Hist. Soc. Lane and Che.sh,, 1891-92, pp. 279 sqq.
90 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Gaelic equivalent lann, whose plural is /anndaickean, which
might explain the whole word. 'Landican ' may have had
the primary meaning of ' the enclosures,' or the later signi-
fication of 'the churches.'
Larton. — The old spelling was Lareton, which ap-
parently means ' the marsh hamlet '— Mdle. Eng. lar, laire,
'marsh,' 'bog,' 'mire,' from O. Nor. leir (Dan., Norw.,
Swed., Icr). Halliwell's ' Diet, of Archaic and Provincial
Words '(1850) has lare, 'quagmire,' 'bog.' There are or
were various cars or mosses in the vicinity of Larton.
Leasowes, The.—' The Pastures'— A.-Sax. Iceswe, ' a
pasture.'
Ledsham is clearly eponymous. In Domesday we
have Levetesham ; and as the names of owners of neighbour-
ing manors occur Leuvede and Leviett. The place was
therefore the ham, or home, of this Saxon family,
Leighton.— Domesday, Lestoite. The numerous Leigh-
tons and Leytons in England were tihis or farmsteads on
meadow or pasture land— A.-Sax. hah, ' meadow,' 'pasture,'
' lea.' The s in the Norman Lestone represents the Saxon
guttural ; cf. Crosfone = Croughton.
Liscard. — The meaning of this name is involved in some
obscurity. Ormerod said^ that the place was formerly
called Listark ; but this was an error for Liscark.^ Irvine
remarks^ that the medieval appellations correspond to those
of Disk card in Cornwall, with which place it is natural to
compare our Liscard ; and as to the Cornish town I have the
following note from a respected local antiquary :
"The ancient name of Liskeard is Lyscerruyt, and
appears so in the Bodmin Manumission Book, written, it is
supposed, between a.d. 940 and 1040. It is said to be the
only original record relating to Liskeard anterior to the
Norman Conquest which is now extant. Liskeard was for
many centuries called ' Liskerrett,' otherwise ' Liskeard.'
The etymology is very uncertain, but the generally received
opinion is that it is derived from Hys or Lis, ' a manor house
or fort,' and Caer, 'a walled town.' "
1 Chesh., 1819, ii. 264.
2 Helsby's Ormerod's Chesh., 1882, ii. 478.
3 Transactions Ilisl. Soc. I-anc. and Chesh., 1891-92, pp. -il*^ sqq.
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 91
The latter part of this derivation must at once be dis-
carded. Lis is perhaps the Cymric llys, ' palace,' ' hall,'
' court,' and the succeeding portion of the name may easily
be the patronymic of the ancient proprietor of the estate ;
but I am rather inclined (at any rate as to our Cheshire
Liscard) to favour a derivation from the Gael, lis or lios,
'enclosure,' etc., combined with Gael, ceard (the Scottish
surname Caird), 'smith,' which would give 'the smith's
place,' corresponding to the English Smethwicks. This
etymology would appear to be clinched by a reference to
Joyce.^ He gives Liscartan as representing ' the fort
[? place] of the forge,' from ceardcha (pron. cardha), ' a forge '
— modern spelling carte, cart, cartaii^ etc. ; ceard (^xor\. card)
'smith,' 'artificer.'
Meols. — Domesday Melas — O. Nor, vielr (genit. case,
inels) ' sandhill,' ' sandbank.'
MoUington occurs in Domesday as Molintone. The
English MoUingtons denote estates originally held by the
Saxon Moiling tribe or family.
Moreton indicated ' the tun or farmstead on or by the
moor ' — A. Sax. mor, ' moor.'
Ness, Nest on. — The Domesday Nesse and Nestone.
Neston was 'the tun or farmstead on the ness,' Le., head-
land — A. -Sax. ncess, O. Nor. ties, ' headland,' 'promontory.'
Netherpool. — ' The ;Lower Pool '— A.-Sax. neother,
'lower.'
New Brighton. — This is a modern name bestowed in
imitation of the Sussex watering-place, which was anciently
called Brihthelmestan, i.e., ' the Stone of Brihthelm.' The
A.-Sax. stiin, literally 'stone,' 'rock,' sometimes indicated
a residence or castle built of stone, or on a rock,^ and a
monumental or boundary stone. A very slight corruption
of the old name of the Sussex Brighton was current up to
the early years of the present century.
1 Irish Local Names Explained, 1884, pp. 66 and 98,
2 The Dutch and Flemish stem {\,xox\.. stCin), literally 'stone,' also
denotes 'a castle': the old Scheldt-side keep at Antweip, now converted
into a " Musceum van Oudhcden " (Museum of Antiquities), is still
called " Het Steen "—The Stone (Castle).
92 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Noctorum. — This name has nothing to do with the
Latin language, despite its genitive plural appearance.
Domesday has Chenoterie, which, if as usual we turn the
Norman ch back into k, does not bear so very distant a
resemblance to the name of the township as it was spelled
in the thirteenth century, viz., Knocttyrum, or even as
Ormerod (1819) has it, Knoctorimu The first element of
these renderings at once suggests the Gael, awe (knock),
'hill.' For the second portion of the name the Gael.
druim, ' ridge,' has been hazarded ; but this is obviously
impossible. We must rather, I think, look for some such
word as Gael, torran (diminutive of torr), 'grave,' 'tomb.'
The nearest approach to the name which I can find in
Joyce's works on Irish topographic etymology is Knockatarry
(Ir, Cnoc-d! -tairhh\ ' the hill of the buU.'^
Overchurch is ' the church on the banks,' i.e., of a
mere which is now drained — A.-Sax. bfer {f=v), 'shore,'
'banks.'
Overpool. — ' The Upper Pool ' — A.-Sax. ofer (J= v),
' upper.' This is the Domesday Pol.
Oxton. — The name of this place figures in meditTval
documents as Oxon, which some have erroneously thought
to be a corruption of a British designation. There is, how-
ever, no reason why a patient animal, anciently more used
than to-day, should not give its name to an Anglo-Saxon
tiin or settlement just as it has given it to a ford (Oxford)
and to a creek (Oxwich). On the other hand, the name
may be, and doubtless is, eponymic ; we know that Oxman-
town, Dublin, was originally ' Ostmentown,' or the dwelling-
place of the Eastern men or Danes. It has been thought
that the Oi:;godestun mentioned in the will of Wulfric Spott,
Earl of Mercia, which was drawn up about 1004 a.d., re-
ferred to the Wirral Oxton ; but I can see no reason to
dissent from Dugdale's identification of this Oggodestiin with
Ogston in Derbyshire.- The Ox in ' Oxton ' is, however,
probably a corruption of a similar personal name in its
genitive or possessive case.
' Irish Local Names Explained, 1884, p. 60.
" Monasticon Anglicanum, 16S2, i. 266.
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 93
Parkgate. — " The name Parkgate is said to have been
given by the labourers who were engaged in making the
sea-wall, and its proximity to Leighton Park originated it ;
before that it was called New Quay or New Haven. "^
Pensby. — In the time of Henry VI. we have Pennesby.
The name no doubt embodies the patronymic of the
founder of this Norse by or settlement. In Scandinavian
peti is the equivalent of ' smart,' ' spruce,' ' nice.'
Poolton, not mentioned in Domesday, was formerly written
Pulton and Poulton, i.e. ' the tun or farmstead by the [Wal-
lasey] Pool ' — A.-Sax. pol. The second Poulton, called in
Domesday PoJitone [?J, took its name from the Brom-
borough Pool, the distinguishing suffix Lancelyn being the
patronymic of ancient owners of the manor.
Prenton. — In Domesday the name of this township
figures as Prestune. The numerous Prestons in England
indicate the tuns or habitations of priests — A.-Sax. /r^t^^A
' priest.' ' Prenton ' is synonymous with ' Preston.' "Ead-
berht, the last true-born King of Kent, was surnamed Pren,
or the Priest, for he had been ordained. "-
Puddington. — The name of this village, near the Dee,
has nothing to do with Christmas cheer. In Domesday it
occurs as Potintone. The English Puddingtons are usually
considered to be settlements of the Saxon PcTeting tribe.
In Anglo-Saxon / and d were often used indiscriminately for
each other.
Raby. — The Domesday spelling is Rabie. The Lanca-
shire ' Roby ' was originally identical with this name. In
both ' Raby ' and ' Roby ' we probably have embodied the
common animal-name of the earliest Scandinavian owner of
the by or settlement, the O. Nor. n?', pron. as row = noise —
Dan.-Norw. ran, Swed. rd, both pron. ra7v — meaning 'a
roe.'
1 Mrs. Gamlin, 'Twixt Mersey and Dee, 1897, p. 251.
" Kemble, Names, Surnames, and Nic-namcs of the Anglo-Saxons,
Proceedings Archxol. Inst. Gl. Britain, 1S46, p. 93.
94 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Soui'hall — Domesday has a Saihak, which developed
later into Sa/g/ia//. This has (perhaps naturally) been
construed as ' the hall of the sallows or willows ' — A. -Sax.
sealh, Scot, saugh, 'a sallow,' 'a willow;' but the A.-Sax.
heaUi is sometimes a word of doubtful meaning. Kemble
decided that it must represent ' a stone house,' 'a hall,' and
this canon was long followed. Recent investigations,
however, show that the word will very often not bear this
interpretation, and that it rather means ' a slope,' which is
in accordance with the signification of the O. Nor. hallir),
' a slope,' ' a hill.'^ On the whole, therefore, we must take
Saughall and Soughall to represent ' willow-slope.'
Seacombe. — The Saxons transformed the Wei. cwin,
'valley,' 'dale,' 'glen,' 'dingle,' into coi/ide. Seacombe is
close to the point where the Mersey discharges itself into
the Irish Sea.
Shotwick. — Both components of this name are of
somewhat uncertain origin. The Domesday spelling was
Soto7vic/ie,2ind in the thirteenth century we find Schotewycke,
v.'hich shows that the early pronunciation was practically as
it is to-day. The three best-known English place-names
with the element .f/z^/— Aldershot, Bagshot, and Oakshot —
being situated on or near the sites of ancient forests, are
generally presumed to derive their last syllable from a com-
bination of the genitive or possessive s with the O. Eng.
/lolf, ' copse,' ' wood ' ; but other names with shot, and
which have the termination sete in Domesday, are thought
by some to be referable, as to this, to a doubtful O. Eng.
seotu, ' common,' ' pasture ' ; while Shottery (near Stratford-
on-Avon), anciently Scotta-nth, it is concluded, might be
' trout-beck ' — A.-Sax. scedt or scebta, ' trout. '^
' In a description of the district (Hales Owen) where Shcnstone
resided, which is prefixed to an edition of ihe poet's works published
in 1793. it is curious to note how often the word 'slope' and its
derivatives are used by the writer, who probably had not the faintest
idea that the name Hales was itself significative of the nature of the
landscape. .Sheriff Hales, also in Shropshire, is called in Domesday
Halas, ihe plural oi healh, 'a slope,' h after a consonant being dropped
in the inflection of Anglo-Saxon nouns.
2 See Taylor, Names and their Histories, 1896, pp. 381 and 385
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 95
Referring to Shotwick, Ormerod says^ : " Here, as in
most cases in Cheshire where this termination of name
occurs, were formerly saltworks." This being so, and salt
deposits having been worked at a very early period in
Britain, and elsewhere — possibly in Britain by the pre-
Celtic agglutinative-language (neolithic) race or races — it is
not improbable that Shotwick was a Saxon ante-Norse
settlement, and that the wiciji) (usually meaning, ' dwelling,'
'habitation,' 'village,' 'station') of the Saxons was con-
verted by the Vikings, i.e.^ the Creekers, into their charac-
teristic word for ' creek,' ' bay,' namely, v'lk (wick). VV^e seem,
however, to have fairly distinct evidence that the A. -Sax.
ivic^ besides its general signification of ' habitation ' (Lat.
vicus (1) ' quarter or street of a town,' (2) ' village,' ' hamlet ';
Gr. qIko% — pron. weekos — 'dwelling-place'), also meant 'a
marsh.' This was Dr. Leo's supposition, and Kemble,
referring to it, says- : " Some plausibility is given to the
suggestion, partly by the frequent use of the termination
-wich in places near salt-pools, and by the occurrence of
such names as hi'ebdiv'u [Reedwich]." It has been thought,
again, not inconceivable that Shotwick may be a corruption
of Scalt-wic or Salt-nnc. A place of this name is mentioned
in a charter of /Ethelbaid of Mercia, a.d. 716-717,^ and
elsewhere, but it is identified with Droitwich.'*
But, on the whole, the most probable explanation of
' Shotwick' is that which defines it as 'the (salt) station on
the shot or spit of land ' (perhaps extending into the river
Dee) — A.-Sax. scedt or scebt, 'corner,' 'division,' 'portion,'
' tract.' In Wright's ' Diet, of Obsolete and Provincial
English' (1857) shot=^zx\ angle of land,' and Halliwell's
' Diet, of Archaic and Provincial Words ' (1850) has shott =
'field,' 'plot of land.' 'Shot' is apparently a doublet of
'sheet,' both being ultimately from A. -Sax. scebtan, 'to
shoot,' 'to extend'; but while 'sheet' takes its pronuncia-
^ Chesh., 1819, ii. 309.
^ Codex Diplomaticus, iii. xli. •* Ibid., i. 81.
•* Had this theory been tenable it would have been necessary to
explain that the voicing of s as sh in Old English is sporadic ; ' she ' is
the A.-S. seS. In Gaelic s, in certain defined positions, including
when preceded or followed by e or i, takca the sound over which the
Ephraimites came to grief; while in Hungarian s has the sh sound
pure and simple.
96 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
tion from what the author of the ' History of English
Sounds ' (Sweet) would call the second gradatory place in
the eo line, i.e., from the preterite singular {scedt), ' shot '
has taken the vowel-sound of the third place, i.e., from the
past participle {scoten). Analogous words in the Teutonic
languages are : Ger. schote, Dan.-Norw. skJ4>d, Swed. shot,
all = ' sheet ' {fiaut.), while Du. schot is ' a partition,' ' a
division.' The place-component shot has frequently given
rise to discussion in Notes and Queries, the most useful
references probably being 6th ser. viii. 369, 412, 523 (1883) ;
8th ser. i. 148, 214, 337, 419, 484 (1892). See footnote
under Fazakerley, in the West Derby Section.
Spital. — This is the same word with hospital, an Old
French term, meaning 'guest-house,' which came through
Low Latin from the classic hospitiiim, ' hospitality,' and, by
metonymy, 'guest-chamber,' 'iim.' In Middle English
hospital suffered apheresis and became spital or spitel. The
present signification of ' hospital ' is of comparatively late
origin.
Stanney figured in Domesday as Stand, i.e., ' the stony
or rocky island ' (or riparian tract)— A.-Sax. stdn, ' stone,'
' rock ' ; ig { = iy), ' island,' ' low riparian land.'
Stoke. — Our Stokes and Stocktons seem to have been
generally stockZidiCdL. places — A.-Sax. stocc, 'stump,' 'stake.'
Occasionally, however, the name might refer (especially in
marshy districts) to an erection on stakes or piles. The
Stokes appear in some respects to compare with our Peels
or old family fortresses or keeps^ — A.-Sax. /// (Lat. pila),
' pile,' ' pillar.'-
Storeton. As this name appears as early as Domesday
— as Stortone — it is not possible that, as has been suggested,
we have here the Mdle. Eng. stor, meaning ' store,' ' farm-
stock,' from O. Fr. estoire. The name doubtless signifies
' the great tun or farmstead ' — A.-Sax. stor (Scand. stbr"),
Mdle. Eng. stor and store, 'great,' 'large,' 'strong,' a word
1 " God save the lady of this pel." — Chaucer, Hous of Fame, iii. 220.
"^ Skeat, however, in his Glossarial Index to Chaucer, 1894, has
"/^/=peel, small castle — O. Yx.pel, from Lat. ace. /«/«;«."
» We meet with the expression stor-thorp (n. pi.), 'large villages,' in
the Saga known as the Fagrskinna.
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 97
which has not come down to our day in England^ unless it
still be used in a few remote provincial districts, while it
flour ishes vigorously in Scandinavia.
Sutton. — Domesday St^dtone, 'the south tiin or farm-
stead ' — A. -Sax. si'tih, 'south.'
Thingwall. — Domesday has Tinguelle. This place was
the ' Parliament Field ' of the Wirral Norsemen — O. Nor.
thing, ' parliament,' vollr (dat. sing, velli), ' field.' See
Thingwall in the West Derby Section.
Thornton Hough. — Domesday has Torinto7ie ; later
we have Thor7ieto?i-en-h-Hogh. The English Thorntons
(A.-Sax. \orn, 'thorn'; /////, 'farmstead') belong to the
numerous class of place-names derived from large plant-life,
such as Acton (Oakton), Ashton, Appleton, etc. A hogh or
hough (A.-Sax. hbJj, ho) is a point of land formed like a heel.
See HooTON.
Thurstaston. — The Domesday spelling of this Dano-
Saxon name is Tiirstaiiefone, which early in the fourteenth
century had become Thurstaneston. There are two possi-
bilities here : the village may originally have been ' the tun
(or farmstead) of Thor's stone '; or the settlement may have
been named after a proprietor who boasted the same patro-
nymic as the Norse king Thorstein, who died 874 a.d. The
former theory is apparently, however, confirmed by the
existence on Thurstaston Common of a large and remark-
able stone or rock, which Picton- concluded to be a relic of
Saxon or Danish heathendom.
Tranmere does not figure in Domesday. The earliest
spellings recorded dispose of any apparent connection with
a mere or marsh. In documents of the thirteenth century
occur Traninuil, Trafiino/i, and Traninoel ; later still we
have Tranmore. There does not seem to be any reason to
doubt the general accuracy of the etymology put forward by
Mr. Irvine^ — Wei. Tre-yn-moel, ' the hill settlement,' especi-
ally as this is borne out physiographically.
^ Yigfusson, however, thinks it is embodied in 'sturdy,' Nor. Eng.
'stordy.'
- Helsby's Ormerod's Chesh., 1SS2, ii. 511.
' Transactions Hist. Sec. Lane, and Chesh., 1S91-92, pp. 279 sqq.
7
9S LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Upton. — This name occurs in Domesday as Opsone, and
is evidently due to the elevated situation of the Anglo-Saxon
fiin or farmstead.
Wallasey. — "The angles of the termination of the
promontory of Wirral consist of two rocky elevations which
have apparently been separated from the mainland by the
streams of the Dee and the Mersey at some distant period.
One of these is called IValea in Domesday, and the other
Cerchebia, or Kirkby, in a charter of 1081. The latter of
these was afterwards denominated ' West Kirkby,' as a dis-
tinction from Kirkby-in-Walley, the name assumed by the
former parish as early as the thirteenth century, and which
was shortly afterwards changed to Walayeseghy^
At any rate, Wallasey at the present day is almost an
island, hemmed in as it is by Liverpool Bay, the Mersey,
Wallasey Pool, and the Birket or Fender. Many local
antiquaries have definitively accepted as the etymology of the
name Wallasey the A.-Sax. combination Weal[h)as-ig, ' the
Welshmen's island,' as it is known that the ancient Britons
held their ground in the Wirral peninsula until a compara-
tively late period compared with other Anglo-Saxon and
Scandinavian districts ; but it appears to have escaped
observation that upon the coast of Essex, whence the Britons
were early driven, there is an island with practically the
same name, viz.^ Wallasea, which Taylor- says is " an island
surrounded by a se3.-7vall or embankment." This is, I think,
the best explanation of the name. The A.-Sax 7uea/l or 7c>all
(genit. wealles or walks ; nom. pi. iveallas or wallas), 'wall,'
'rampart,' etc.; the Dan.-Norw. val, 'bank,' 'shore'; and
the Swed. and Ger. wall, Du. ival, 'dam,' 'dike,' 'rampart,'
' shore,' are from the Lat. valbim, 'rampart.' The suffix ey
is the A.-Sax. ig ( = ly), O. Nor. ey, of which ea, in the case
of island-names, is a corruption. We may take it that the
first two syllables in ' Wallasey ' and ' Wallasea ' are the
plural of wall, and not the genitive singular, and that there-
fore the names should be read literally as ' embankments
island,' not 'embankment island,' there probably having
been a series of sea-resisting dams on each island, although,
^ Ormerod's Chesh., 1819, i'. 261.
' Names and their Histories, 1896, p. 373.
HUNDRED OF WIRRAL 99
as to the Wirral island, this was apparently not the case at
the time of the Domesday Survey, which, as we have seen,
gives V/aka. It is interesting to note that there exists at the
present day a Wallasey Embankment Commission, whose
members are elected triennially.
West Kirkby.— See under Wallasey. In a charter
of 1 08 1 the name of this rising watering-place occurs as
Cerchebi and Cenhebia, the Normanized form of the original
Norse name — O. Nor. kirkja (Dan.-Norw. kirke, Swed.
kyrka, Scot, kirk), 'church'; Scand. /{y, 'village.' 'West'
was prefixed to 'Kirkby' in order to distinguish this church-
village from the old Wallasey Kirkby.
Whitby. — The name of this village near Ellesmere Port
is the Norse equivalent of the EngUsh Whitton, or ' white
town' — O. Nor. and A.-Sax. hw'it, 'white,' 'bright'; Scand.
by, ' settlement,' ' village.' The Saxons and Scandinavians
appear to have used the adjective Jnvit, ' white,' to dis-
tinguish stone buildings from the usual sombre wooden
erections. Compare 'Whitchurch.'
Willaston. — " From circumstances which it would be
vain to inquire into, the township from which the Hundred
of Wirral derives its Norman name of IVilaveston has
escaped notice in the Domesday Survey. It appears first
... in 1230 . . . [as] Willaston.'''''^ This name without
doubt embodies the personal appellation (perhaps W'jgldf,
* War Heritage ') of the original Saxon proprietor of the tun
or manor.
Wirral. — The name of the celebrated peninsula occurs
in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'^ as IVirheal, literally (prob-
ably) 'myrtle-corner' — A.-Sax. tcur, 'a myrtle-tree'; heal,
' angle,' ' corner,' ' slope '; the supposition being that this
corner of land was originally overgrown with bog-myrtle. It
is interesting to note that one of the mediseval spellings of
the name of the peninsula recurs so late as 1820 in a Crown
deed conveying the bailiwick of Wirehall to one John
Williams of Liverpool, to whom the Government sold it in
fee. Mr. Mortimer has printed the conveyance verbatim?
' Ormerod's Chesh., 1819, ii. 300.
^ Under the year 805 — Alfred's Wars with the Danes.
^ Hist, of Wirral, 1847, p. 154.
100 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
The form IVirhal (" on Wirhalum ") is found in the will of
Wulfric Spott {ob. loio), as printed by Dugdale.^ Sir Peter
Leycester has the present spelling Wirral in the seventeenth
century.^
^ Monasticon Anglicanum, 1682, i. 266.
^ Antiquities of Cheshire, 1673, P- 92-
LIST OF WORKS QUOTED.
{This list docs not represent ail the 'works and records consulted : it
contains only those to which actual reference is made, and it does not
include dictionaries and periodicals. ]
Ancient Battlefields in Lancashire. Hardwick, 1S82.
Angelsdchsische Ortsnamen (' Rectitudines Singularum Personarum '.
Leo, 1842.
Anglo-Saxon a7id Old English Vocabularies. Wright, Wiilcker, 1884.
, An
s^lo-Saxon Chronicle
. Gibson's ed.
, 1692.
do.
Thorpe's ed
, 1861.
do.
Earle's ed. ,
1S65.
do.
Plummer's ed., 1889
An
glo-Saxon Reader.
Sweet, 1S94.
Annates Cambria (' Monumenta Historica Britannica '). Petrie, Sharpe,
Hardy, 1848.
Antiquities of Cheshire. Leycester, 1673.
Beowulf. Thorpe's 3rd ed., 1S89.
Britannia. Camden, 1586 and 1607 eds.
do. do. Gibson's ed., 1772.
do. do. Gough's ed., 1789.
Brut y Tyioysogion, or Chronicle of the [PFelsh] Princes (' Monumenta
Historica Britannica'). Petrie, Sharpe, Hardy, 1848.
Cartularium Saxonicum. Birch, 1885, etc,
Celtic Britain. Rhys, 1884.
Chancery Rolls (Rotuli Cancellarii).
Charter Rolls (Rotuli Chartarum).
Chaucer's Works. Skeat's ed., 1S94, etc.
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Society, 1839-48.
Corpus Poeticum Boreale. Vigfusson, Powell, 1S83.
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Domesday. Ellis, 1816.
Domesday Book and Beyond. Maitland, 1897.
Domesday Cheshire aiid Lancashire. Beamont, 1882.
Domesday Facsimile of Cheshire and Lancashire. James, 1S61-63.
102 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
Ducky /Records (Ducatus Lancastrise).
EtJglish Surnames : Their Sources and Significations. Bardsley
5th ed., 1897.
English Village Community. Seebohm, 1884.
Ethekverd's Chronicle (' Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam ').
Savile, 1601.
do. {'Monumenta Historica Britannica '). Petrie,
Sharpe, Hardy, 1848.
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Glossariitm Antiquitatum Britannicarum. Baxter, 1733.
Great de Lacy Inquisition, 1311 ('Three Lancashire Documents').
Chetham Society, 1868.
Greek and Latin Etymology. Peile, 1869.
Hand' Atlas fiir die Geschichte des Mittelalters. Spruner, Menke, 1880.
Harmony in Language. Mitford, 1804.
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Bede. Stevenson's ed., 1841.
do. do. Plummer's ed., 1896.
Historical English Grammar. Morris, 1875.
History of Cheshire. Ormerod, 1819.
do. do. Helsby's ed., 1882.
History of Christian Names. Miss Yonge, 1884.
History of Cumberland. Jefferson, 1842.
History of English Sounds from the Earliest Period. Sweet, 1 888,
History of Evert on. Syers, 1830.
History of Lancashire. Baines, 1836.
do. do. Harland and Herford's ed., 1868-70.
do. do. Croston's ed., 1888-93.
History of Leverpool. Enfield, 1774-
History of Liverpool. Troughton, 1810.
do. T. Baines, 1852.
History of Manchester. Whitaker, 1775.
History of Preston. Hardwick, 1857.
History of Sankey. Beamont, 1889.
History of Wirral. Mortimer, 1847.
Holinsked's Chronicles. Hooker's ed., 1587.
Icelandic Sagas, etc. , relating to the Settlements and Descents of the
Northmen on the British Isles. Vigfusson's Text, 1887 ; Dasent's
Translation, 1894.
Irish Local Najues Explained. Joyce, 1884.
Irish Names of Places. 2nd ser. Joyce, 1875.
Itinerary (Leland). Hearne's 2nd ed., 1744.
Lancashire and Cheshire, Past and Present. T. Baines, 1867.
Lancashire and Cheshire Records Preserved in the Public Record Office,
London. Selby. Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, 1882-83.
Lancashire Glossary. Nodal, Milner. English Dialect Society,
1875-82.
LandndmabSk (' Islendi'nga Sogur'). Kongelige Nordiske Oldskrift
Selskab (Copenhagen), 1843.
LIST OF WORKS QUOTED 103
Liier Vitce Ecclesice Dunelmensis. Stevenson's ed. Surtees Society,
1841.
do. Sweet's ed. Early English Text
Society, 1885.
Manipulus Vocabulorum. Levin, 1570. Early English Text Society,
1867.
MedicEval Surnames and their Various Spellings. Grazebrook. Society
of Antiquaries, 1897.
Memorials of Liverpool. Picton, 1875.
Mersey, Ancient and Modern. Blower, 1878.
Monasticoti Anglica7nun. Dugdale, 1682 ; Ellis's ed. 1817-30.
Momwtenta Historica Britamiica. Petrie, Sharpe, Hardy, 1848.
Moore Charters and Docu7)ients J\elating to Liverpool : Report to the
City Council. Part I. Picton, 1889.
Names a7id their Histories. Taylor, 1896.
Names, Surnames, and Nic-Names of the Anglo-Saxons. Kemble.
Archaeological Institute of Great Britain, 1846.
Ninth Lnquisitions (Nonarum Inquisitiones).
Notes on English Etymohgy. Skeat. Philological Society, /^^^'w.
Oldest English Texts. Sweet. Early English Text Society, 1885.
Patent Rolls (Rotuli Litterarum Patentium).
Pipe Rolls (Magni Rotuli Pipce).
Place-Names in the Himdi-ed of IVirral. Irvine. Lancashire and
Cheshire Historic Society, 1891-92.
Polych-onicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cesti-ensis, with Trevisa's
and another Translation. Babbington and Lumby's ed., 1S65-86.
Portfolio of Fragments relative to the History and Antiquities of Lan-
cashire. Gregson, 1817; Harland's ed., 1869.
Post-Mortem Inquisitions (Calendarium Inquisiiionum Post Mortem).
Pre-Nor7nan Sculptured Sto7ies i7i La7icashire. Browne. Lancashire
and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 18S7.
Promptoriu7/i Pa7~vulo>-wn. Way's ed. Camden Society, 1843-65.
Proper Na/zies z« Philological a7id Eth7iological E/iquiries. Picton.
Literary and Philosophical Society, Liverpool, 1865-66.
Ptoler/iy Elucidated. Rylands, 1893.
Rise a7td Prog7-ess of the E7tglish Co/n7/ionwealth : A7tglo-Saxon Period.
Palgrave, 1832.
Ry77ie7-'s Fcedera.
Saxonis Gra7n77iatici Gesta Da7ioru77i. Holder's ed., 1886.
do. First nine books translated and
edited by Elton and Powell respectively, 1894.
Saxons in Engla7id. Kemble. 15irch's ed., 1876.
Scie7ice of Language. Max Miiller, 1862-64.
ScSp or Glee77ia7is Tale. Thorpe's ed., 1889.
Scottish La7id-Nar/ies. Maxwell, 1S94.
South I^ancashire Dialect. Picton. Literary and Philosophical
Society, Liverpool, 1864.
Survey of 1320-1346 ('Three Lancashire Documents'). Chetham
Society, 1868.
Testa de Nevill.
Traces of History in the Names of Places. Edmunds, 1S72.
I04 LIVERPOOL DISTRICT PLACE-NAMES
' Twixt Mersey and Dee. Mrs. Gamlin, 1897.
Village Comtminity. Gomme, 1890.
Words and Places. Taylor, 1864, 1873.
■ Note. — Several treatises quoted are not inserted in the foregoing
list owdng to their lack of bibliographical interest.
The Publications of the following Societies are quoted ;
Archjeological Institute of Great Britain.
Camden Society.
Chester Archaeological Society.
Chetham Society.
Early English Text Society.
English Dialect Society,
English Historical Society.
Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.
Kongelige Nordiske Oldskrift Selskab (Copenhagen).
Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society.
Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool.
Numismatic Society.
Philological Society.
Pipe Roll Society.
Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.
Society of Antiquaries.
Surtees Society.
THE END.
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