10 OCTOBER 1903, Page 12
should be preserved less by daily use than by the
fact that strip of land, under its
<p>families who dwelt near. Plain Tom o' the Knap became in Strange legends grow round field names. A certain heathy process of time Thomas Snap, under which patent of respect- tract, remote and solitary, is known as "Deadman's Half," the ability be figured in the parish registers. During the six- prefix being a surname that occurs in the parish registers.</p>
<p>teenth century, particularly after the dissolution of the -The surface of the field is, in a countryman's words, "all monasteries, when so considerable a portion of the Church's humpy, an' covered wi' want [mole] hills an' emmutt-heaps."</p>
<p>possessions fell into lay hands, large tracts of common land The uneven appearance, coupled with the name and the circum- were enclosed and held in severalty. The occupation passed stance that the locality is a favourite camping-place for gipsies in this way from the lord of the manor to small copyholders, and other "travelling folk," have bred in the minds of the and the consequent increase of occupiers would necessitate a rustics a conviction that " Dead Man's- Half," as they have it,</p>
<p>more particular specification in the holdings and their various is "the Gips' buryin' ground, where they buries one another."</p>
<p>parts. "They're bound to die same as we do, an' who ever heard of a It is probable, therefore, that many of the field names gippo bein' buried in the churchyard P " is the argument date from this period. Occasionally the new lessees would whereby they support their belief. A dreary road, which the</p>
<p>call the lands after their own names ; a more frequent wanderers themselves call " The Long Drag," leads to their custom, however, was to utilise any convenient natural solitary resting-place. The tradition that was formerly linked peculiarity. Differences of soil, shape, size, and situation with " Blood Close," by which unsavoury appellation a pasture were noted, and in the same map may be found the appel- near the Berkshire town of Wantage is represented in the lations " Redlands," " Blacklands," " White Field," " Nettle Tithe Schedule, has almost, if not quite, died out of remem- Hill," " Picked " or " Pointed Piece," and " Stone-pit Furlong." brance. In the " Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica," No. 13, The presence of clay and green sandstone cropping out in printed in 1783, Mr. G. Woodward, writing on the subject, unexpected places is marked by " Sandy Furlong " and " Clay states that the soil of this field dyed the boots red of those Ground." The "Hither Feeding Ground" has about it an persons who crossed it during sunshiny weather. He goes on archaic ring recalling early settlers, who, if their speech was to say that the country people told him that many hundreds of homely, did not lack imagination. "Starve-all Furlong" and years before a great battle between the Saxons and the Danes " Blankett Mead," the latter denoting soft, woolly pasture, had been fought on the spot, which retained in its name a convey the nature of the fields they represent with an impres- memory of the slain. The writer, however, rejects this theory, sionist touch ; while homely and unpoetical though the title and believes (for his part) that "Blood Close " was so styled "Pig-trough Bottom" be, it is at least expressive, presenting because the "loom" just here was of a more purplish tint to the mind a picture of the trough-like hollows that cleave than the surrounding earth. A probable explanation may be the sides of the downs, and that are also known among the found in the fact that large shambles formerly existed but a country people as devils' dykes. Equally apposite is " Honey- short distance from the field, possibly even within its con- pot Piece," which lies in rich, low ground, where the seed fines, for "Horn Lane," one side of which was bounded brings forth abundantly and helps to atone for the meagre by a wall composed of bullocks' horns and hoofs, is only yield of "Stony Furlong." A flash of rustic humour which still separated from the said pasture by the high-road. At one has power to move the labourer to mirth is perceptible in the time in the history of the town strings of pack-horses, laden names "Cock," "Hen," and " Chick Piece." They were with supplies of meat, used to be despatched across the downs bestowed upon three tracts of arable land of varying size lying to the distant villages. The tanning of the slaughtered near one another, and, according to an agriculturist who animals' 'hides was an important industry, of which the name remembers when they were commonly used, they indicate a " Tanner Street" is the sole survival. The novel structure large field, a lesser, and a little one,—father, mother, and child, that conferred grace and distinction upon " Horn Lane " was in short. Where natural features, owing to a dull uniformity purchased some years ago by a bone merchant, who de- of surface and soil, afford no scope for invention, artificial molished it and carried away the material that it might be aid is invoked. A building fulfils the double purpose of a ground up and converted into chemical fertiliser. There is a shelter and a distinguishing term. The " Sheep-house " lends grim suggestiveness in passing directly from "Blood Close " to itself simultaneously to the great, the little, and the middle "Hell Furlong," which is bestowed, so the labourers aver, pasture, and we find the homestead following its example in upon bad soil where nothing but weeds will flourish. Yet the " Upper Ham Field," the "Poor Ham," and the "Lower a spark of humour may be struck even from this ill-omened Ham." 'The farmyard is "worked for all it is worth," as the designation. It was borne by an enclosure—on a low-lying American observed when watching Oxford undergraduates at farm—to which a couple of gates that were kept strictly locked play upon "their little river." " Ramsleaze," "Bullock's gave access. The occupier was a little gentle old lady, whose Bush," " Gooselands," " Calf Ground," " Duck's Nest Pasture," piety was seasoned with shrewd common-sense. It was her all find a place in the enumeration. Compounds in which the custom to receive reports and pay the men's wages in a little horse plays a part are rarer; the present writer has never room that communicated by a sash-window with the passage happened to come across one. Of deeper interest than the of the house along which the farm servants filed. She was names embraced in the categories mentioned are those that sitting at the opening, as usual, one evening, when the fogger's recall associations and events which otherwise would be for- rough head made its appearance. " Pl'ase, ma'am," he said, -gotten. " Gospel Leaze " keeps green the memory of the thrusting something towards her, " I've a-brought 'ee the pious lord of the manor who bequeathed certain lands for kays o' Hell Gate!"</p>
<p>discovered from the shrieks proceeding from upstairs, was the maintenance of the chantey-priest " for ever." In one aiding in holding down a youthful victim in the bathroom village the Abbey of St. John of Jerusalem, which owned while the others turned the tap on. property there, is remembered only by the name " St. John's Close," and the immunity of the Abbey lands from tithe, they having been enfranchised at the dissolution of FIELD NAMES. the greater monasteries. The moat or fish-pond, once so</p>
<p>TT is a matter for regret that the old field names, with important an adjunct of religious house and manor, would be which often much of the history of the parish is con- unrecognisable in the weedy pond of to-day, upon whose stag- nected, should be passing out of remembrance, and that they nant water the ducks rock lazily, were it not that the adjacent</p>
<p>should be preserved less by daily use than by the fact that strip of land, under its <title of "Moat Piece," hands on the they are enshrined in ancient local maps, in the Enclosure tradition of past glories. With a meadow called "The Butts," Awards and Tithe Schedules. One is struck when studying which lies outside a Wessex village, tradition has taken a more these records by the ingenuity our forefathers displayed in practical direction. The name suggests that on this spot was devising characteristic epithets whereby to distinguish the held the archery practice which local Magistrates as late as various " pieces" of ground which constitute the parish. 1541 were bidden by statute to enforce, and it is significant to Doubtless some of the names, like the " Shaw," signifying a learn in this connection that from time immemorial the youths tuft of trees—applied in some instances to a fringe of wood- of the parish have exercised a prescriptive right to the field for land bordering the high-road—and the " Knap," which Bailey their games and sports. Not only do they play cricket and naively defines to be " the Top of an Hill, or anything that football in " The Butts," but they celebrate the Fifth of Novem- sticks out," originated spontaneously as it were, and have her there, and all occasions of national rejoicing. Nor does come down from early Saxon days. They have served to lend the occupying tenant venture to dispute the claim, although dignity, not only to the spots thus designated, but to the it must commend itself but little to him.</p>
<p>families who dwelt near. Plain Tom o' the Knap became in Strange legends grow round field names. A certain heathy process of time Thomas Snap, under which patent of respect- tract, remote and solitary, is known as "Deadman's Half," the ability be figured in the parish registers. During the six- prefix being a surname that occurs in the parish registers.</p>
<p>teenth century, particularly after the dissolution of the -The surface of the field is, in a countryman's words, "all monasteries, when so considerable a portion of the Church's humpy, an' covered wi' want [mole] hills an' emmutt-heaps."</p>
<p>possessions fell into lay hands, large tracts of common land The uneven appearance, coupled with the name and the circum- were enclosed and held in severalty. The occupation passed stance that the locality is a favourite camping-place for gipsies in this way from the lord of the manor to small copyholders, and other "travelling folk," have bred in the minds of the and the consequent increase of occupiers would necessitate a rustics a conviction that " Dead Man's- Half," as they have it,</p>
<p>more particular specification in the holdings and their various is "the Gips' buryin' ground, where they buries one another."</p>
<p>parts. "They're bound to die same as we do, an' who ever heard of a It is probable, therefore, that many of the field names gippo bein' buried in the churchyard P " is the argument date from this period. Occasionally the new lessees would whereby they support their belief. A dreary road, which the</p>
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