The Kent History Forum

Geography in Kent => Place Names => Topic started by: Smiffy on April 24, 2020, 06:23:43 PM

Title: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on April 24, 2020, 06:23:43 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Dave Smith on April 24, 2020, 09:22:20 PM
Smiffy. I'd go along with that very good idea- anything to keep an interest in the Forum. Your initial batch I found most interesting. How about Bearsted & Harrietsham for starters? There seems to be a bit of niggling going on, I'm sad to see, about photographs for " guess the place". Ok, a lot of us don't know how to download these; personally I would copy on my printer & transfer to computer & then, hopefully, copy & paste on the KHF site. But I may be wrong. And personally I wouldn't worry where they came from; would someone really go to the trouble of taking me to court for posting a picture for others to enjoy?
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: grandarog on April 25, 2020, 12:36:06 PM
Think its a great Idea Smiffy . Also it would be nice to see a topic picturing village signs to run along side.It was  very well used on Kyn's Board .When Stuart puts  Kentish Place Names up and running as a Topic we can add this one in.Milton Regis, over the centuries has been called by various names.

Midletun
Middleton Terra Regis
Middletune
Milton Next Sittingbourne.
Milton Royal
And Finally now Milton Regis.

The only salutations to earlier names are the road named  Middletune Avenue and Middleton Mews.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on April 25, 2020, 02:01:22 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Dave Smith on April 26, 2020, 11:56:17 AM
Many thanks Smiffy, & there was I thinking Harrietsham was the hamlet of Harriet! Interesting to see how old Bearsted is. It's quite close to the Pilgrims Way, running along the base of the Downs through Thurnham, where I think there was an abbey at one time. So, is Thurnham also there please? And of course, we mustn't forget Rochester, on a par with Canterbury or even older?
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: MartinR on April 26, 2020, 12:45:07 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on April 26, 2020, 04:45:30 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on April 27, 2020, 06:27:22 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: grandarog on April 28, 2020, 06:00:15 PM
Thats Great ,Thanks Smiffy. :)


MartinR  :-.
 Referring to your post .I always wondered where it got its name from.Situated, New Road Rochester
Quote, "There never was an actual place called "Roffensis" or any variant thereon"Always wondered where it got its name from




Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on May 09, 2020, 10:02:52 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on May 11, 2020, 05:06:58 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on May 16, 2020, 11:21:10 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Dave Smith on May 17, 2020, 10:06:29 AM
Smiffy. Burham. My friend's uncle had a farm at Burham Down, which was on top of a ridge, overlooking the whole area, so it could have been a fortress in its own right originally. Not dependant on the nearness of Rochester.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on May 17, 2020, 01:42:00 PM
You may well be right - Burham is some 4.5 miles from Rochester, so there could have been some other unknown and nearer stronghold. If it was some kind of wooden fortification this may have disappeared long ago without trace.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 21, 2020, 01:55:05 PM
Found this interesting and thought provoking. If no pre-Roman settlement had been found in Rochester, then is it possible that Burham was the actual location of the large Briton settlement here? This would place it closer to the ancient fording places, Pilgrims Way and nearer the perported location of the Battle of Medway.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on May 21, 2020, 06:22:20 PM
There seems to be a lot of Roman and pre-Roman archaeology around Burham, so perhaps it had some ancient significance that has yet to be determined?
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 21, 2020, 06:39:55 PM
I thought about Kitt's Coty, etc after I had posted.Since then, I've been wondering why there would even be any Ancient settlement in Rochester, as the site is fairly pointless before the Roman bridge. It would be hemmed in by a marsh to the north and river to the west. I could imagine Burham being a much more logical location.


 We'll get Time Team onto it after the lockdown!
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: MartinR on May 21, 2020, 07:27:49 PM
But if the river is your main highway, then Rochester has the advantage of firm(ish) banks and access to the hinterland.  It would be a lot easier to transport goods from the Maidstone area to Rochester by water than over the escarpment.  Likewise goods imported from or exported to places further afield on the Thames and beyond would have a natural port in the Rochester area.  As both the Romans and Normans realised, Rochester Castle hill is a strong point from which you can control the Medway, further downstream, for instance at Upnor,  weapons of the date would not have the range.  Downstream the area was basically marsh (excepting Frindsbury and Upnor) which merged into the tidal mudflats.  In Rochester itself 1961 Belgic remains were found under the Roman layers, and pre-Roman coin dies have also been discovered.  These may indicate that it was a centre of some importance.  How much importance and how much size is, however, pure speculation and nearly devoid of evidence!
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 22, 2020, 10:54:04 PM
I'm in some agreement until the bit about the Romans and the castle hill strong point. I thought there was no evidence of a Roman castle there? I know the town wall that eventually surrounded the Roman town also passed that point, but strong point?


Back to the Rochester name, as you said, we take the derivative as the Roman fort by the bridge, then it follows that that Roman name can only have been applied after the Romans built the bridge. It therefore does nothing to prove there was a pre-Roman strong hold there. There was one at Canterbury, and traces have been found of that.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: MartinR on May 23, 2020, 10:57:06 AM
Ronald Marsh* states that after 175 there was systematic fortification of the town.  What is known of the walls indicates that the castle hill was within them.  Brown** states that the castle used the remains of the Roman town walls as foundations.  There is no evidence of a formal fortress (though strong supposition of Plautius setting up a small fort during the invasion) but the fortified town enclosed the castle hill.  Subsequent Norman building has erased the previous property there (from Domesday we know that the land yielded an annual rent of 17/4 to the bishop in 1086 values).  That's why I used the term "strong point" and eschewed "stonghold", "fort", "fortress" or "castle".
Pre-Roman Belgic remains and coin dies have been found.  The Celtic "kingdom" of the Cantiaci had two main administrative centres or 'oppida': Canterbury and Rochester.  Due to two millennia of changing land use there is no evidence whether this was a true oppidum (a large fortified Iron Age settlement) or something much smaller.  Hence my final warning sentence about "How much importance and how much size is, however, pure speculation and nearly devoid of evidence!"
There is a suggestion that the Watling Street is based upon an earlier trackway which crossed the Medway at this point.  I've not been able to find any details of how, there wouldn't have been a bridge and I would have thought the bottom too silty for a ford.  However, at that time the currents and depth were less (Strood hadn't been built up narrowing the river) so a low tide crossing might have been possible, alternatively there might have been some sort of ferry.  The river used to cut in to below the castle (until the Esplanade was built) and early drawings show it being used by boats as a landing place.

*Marsh, Ronald (1974), Rochester, The evolution of the City, Medway Borough Council
**Brown, Reginald Allen (1969), Rochester Castle, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 23, 2020, 02:44:37 PM

MartinR, thanks for that, but it was the following that I am not clear about....

As both the Romans and Normans realised, Rochester Castle hill is a strong point from which you can control the Medway,


I mean, don't see any evidence that the Romans used Castle Hill to control the Medway. Didn't they just eventually build a wall to surround their town?
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 25, 2020, 01:06:35 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: MartinR on May 25, 2020, 03:17:20 PM
Good work.  Do you want to update Wiki with your results?
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 25, 2020, 09:56:38 PM
Thanks, I had a try at your suggestion. It beat me and I am now on a four day ban! It looks more complex than I had supposed. I looked through the previous edits and saw that someone have previously changed the coin moulds to coin dies (evidently without checking the actual quoted source).


I've enjoyed looking into this subject. I kind of wish the discussion had continued longer.😀


Looking forward to more place names until Time Team are allowed out to dig again!
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: MartinR on May 25, 2020, 10:49:06 PM
I'm confused.  WP's entry for the history of Rochester was last changed by a human at 08:16 on 6 December 2019.  That was merely a technical change, before that the previous change was at 23:17 on 2 March 2019.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 25, 2020, 11:16:01 PM
This was an edit years back. I was scrolling back looking for changes in the relevant paragraph.


edit


15:41 27 June 2012......I did say it was way back!
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: MartinR on May 26, 2020, 12:06:28 AM
I thought you said you currently had a ban - why would this arise from an edit "years back"?
The original "coin moulds" (in passing, not quite the same as "coin pellet moulds") was changed to "coin dies" at 16:41 on 27 June 2012 by user Wetman with the edit summary "Coins are struck not cast ...".  Subsequently at 11:58 on 6 June 2014 Martin of Sheffield provided a citation for the coin moulds/dies: "Detsicas 1983 cited by Howell 2014 p 40".  Howell does indeed refer to "coin moulds" in a passing reference during an article on excavation in Furfield Quarry.  Now the question arises: were these moulds associated with a mint which a casual reader would assume, or are they "coin pellet moulds" for counterfeiters and jewelers?  It would be nice to get a date on these, since the article you cite below seems to imply this was a late Roman problem.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 26, 2020, 11:12:22 AM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: MartinR on May 26, 2020, 11:59:44 AM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on May 26, 2020, 12:52:28 PM
Yes, if you remove the preceding paragraph I posted, you could come to the conclusion you stated. However, the problem is that the paragraph IS there. Plus your paragraph says of 1st/2nd century forgery that it was relatively rare, not that it didn't exist. They have certainly found forgeries from then.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: stuartwaters on May 26, 2020, 03:40:13 PM
This seems to have gone seriously off-topic. I'll have a bit of a sort out when I get home after work.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on May 26, 2020, 06:53:36 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Dave Smith on May 27, 2020, 06:55:15 PM
Smiffy. I find your list of place names very interesting. Could you please enlighten me on the significance of 1610, when they all seem to become the modern spelling?
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on May 27, 2020, 11:56:08 PM

This probably pertains to the work of John Speed, whose atlas "The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain" also contained individual county maps. These were prepared for engraving in about 1610, and first appeared in atlas form two years later. They became a standard reference and were still in use well into the 18th century.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on May 30, 2020, 05:24:57 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on June 07, 2020, 01:52:02 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on June 12, 2020, 09:10:28 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on June 17, 2020, 06:20:07 PM

Queenborough

Originally known as Bynnee, from the Old English binnan ?a "within the river". This refers to its site at the western end of the Swale. Between 1361 and 1377 a castle was built here by Edward III to protect this important sea passage. It was then renamed Queen's Borough in honour of his wife, Queen Philippa.
Quenesburgh - 1367
Queneburgh' - 1376
Queenborow - 1610


Leysdown

Old English l?ages d?n "Clearing's hill" - a hill associated with a clearing.   
Legesdun - c.1100
Leesdon' - 1175
Leysdon - 1247


Minster in Sheppey

Old English mynster "Monastery"
Menstre - 1270
Mynster - 1610

Referred to in c.1100 as Sexburgamynster - Seaxburh's monastery, founded in c.675 by Seaxburh, the widow of Eorconbeorht, the King of Kent from 640-664.

Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: stuartwaters on June 18, 2020, 09:45:45 PM
These are excellent Smiffy, thank you so much for sharing these with us.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on June 21, 2020, 01:22:48 AM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on June 24, 2020, 04:46:14 PM

Trottiscliffe

Old English Trottes clif "Trott's cliff"
Trottes clyva - 788
Trotescliua - c.975
Totesclive - 1086
Trottescliue - 1231
Trosclyffe - 1610


Addington

From the Old English Eadding t?n "Eadda's farmstead"
Eddintune - 1086
Eadintuna - c.1100
Edingtone, Edintune - 1185
Adington' - 1256
Addington - 1610


Ryarsh

Old English ryge ersc "Rye field" a field of stubble on which rye has been grown.
Riesce - 1086
Reiersce - c.1100
Reyhersse, Ryersse - 1253
Rehersh, Reyershe - 1278
Ryersh - 1610

Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Mike Gunnill on June 24, 2020, 08:32:58 PM

Trottiscliffe

Old English Trottes clif "Trott's cliff"
Trottes clyva - 788
Trotescliua - c.975
Totesclive - 1086
Trottescliue - 1231
Trosclyffe - 1610


Addington

From the Old English Eadding t?n "Eadda's farmstead"
Eddintune - 1086
Eadintuna - c.1100
Edingtone, Edintune - 1185
Adington' - 1256
Addington - 1610


Ryarsh

Old English ryge ersc "Rye field" a field of stubble on which rye has been grown.
Riesce - 1086
Reiersce - c.1100
Reyhersse, Ryersse - 1253
Rehersh, Reyershe - 1278
Ryersh - 1610


Many thx Smiffy. Very helpful.  Well done






Mike
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on June 29, 2020, 01:33:02 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on July 03, 2020, 06:56:32 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Cosmo Smallpiece on July 04, 2020, 04:11:23 PM
I'm sure I was told that Gravesend was so called because that was where the line of graves stretched from London during the black death? Well your versions pre-date that myth! Thanks.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on July 05, 2020, 03:24:02 PM
It's sometimes surprising how far back the origin of place names go. Most date from the Anglo Saxon era but others like headlands, islands and rivers may still retain some form of their old British names, so go back well over two millennia. Kent itself is the oldest county name in Britain.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on July 10, 2020, 11:39:47 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on July 17, 2020, 03:40:46 PM

Sittingbourne

Old English s?dinga burne "Stream of the slope-dwellers"
Sidingeburn - 1200
Sidingburne - c.1230
Sithingeburne - 1262
Sittingborne - 1610
Sittingbourne is situated on the lower slope of a ridge near to Milton creek.


Bredgar

From the Old English br?d g?ra "Broad gore or wedge-shaped piece of land"
Bradegare - c.1100
Bradgare - 1205
Bredgar - 1610


Wormshill

From the Old English W?denes hyll "Woden's hill"
Godeselle - 1086
Godeshelle - c.1100
Wodnesell' - 1232
Wodneshill', Worneshelle, Wormeshille - 1270
Wormshill - 1610
Although dedicated to the god Woden, it seems to have been known simply as "God's hill" by the Normans. The older name returned later in the 13th century, but changed  form to comply with the established religion.
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: MartinR on July 17, 2020, 06:26:13 PM
Hi Smiffy.  That origin for Sittingbourne has been disputed.  Hastead (History of Kent, 1790s) states that  "Sittingbourne was anciently written Sedingbourne, in Saxon, Saedingburga, i.e. the hamlet by the bourne or small stream."  The river which flows under Crown Quay Lane is called the Bourne River.  See http://www.sittingbourne-museum.co.uk/Name Sittingbourne.htm (http://www.sittingbourne-museum.co.uk/Name Sittingbourne.htm)
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on July 24, 2020, 04:59:19 PM
Title: Re: Kent Place Names
Post by: Smiffy on July 30, 2020, 11:37:08 PM