Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 12

The curious intimacy with the land which seems to me to be an exclusively British characteristic is expressed by the way every geographical feature, however insignificant, has over the long course of history been personalised with its own name. Every wood, copse, spinney, dell, dene, gully, knowe, field, meadow, stream, bog or pond has been christened after a person, a local or national event, the type of growth in the immediate area, an animal or an interesting landmark. Rural place names are the narrators of the countryside, giving it identity and a feeling of companionable familiarity.

A glance at an Ordnance Survey map of the district immediately around Wingates, in Northumberland, where we owned family farms when I was a child, is a typical example; one that is replicated in similar density across the whole of Britain. Interspersed among ancient earthworks, cairns, sites of Iron Age settlements, traces of a Roman road known as the Devil’s Causeway, remnants of Cistercian monastic granges and the ruins of a sixteenth-century castle are place names which give an indication of their history. Doe Hill was presumably a piece of good, sheltered land where does calved in the spring; Heron’s Close, perhaps a wood where herons nested; Harelaw, a grassy hillock frequented by hares during the rut and Haredene, the little wood adjacent to it. Garrett Lee Wood and Geordie Bell Plantation are named after people long forgotten, but whose names live on in history; Todburnis a small stream near a fox earth; Whinney Hill, where gorse would be encouraged to grow for winter feed; Linden Hill Head, the hill above a wood of lime trees; the Birks, a birch wood; and Gallows Shaw, a wood where there was once a gallows or a hanging tree. Beggars’ Bush denotes a hawthorn spinney; a hawthorn was known as a beggars’ bush because vagrants often slept under them, the dense branches offering some weather protection. ‘Who shall never tarry with master, but trudge from post to pillar, till they take up beggars’ bush for their lodging.’ The saying ‘go to the beggars’ bush’ was subsequently usually applied to people who had brought about their own ruin. Ewesleys was a productive pasture for pregnant ewes; and Sheep Wash a field adjacent to a stream where sheep used to be washed before shearing, to remove the sulphur grease rubbed into their fleece to prevent parasites and maggot fly. The Chirm (as in charm) was a copse noted for little birdsong; Pie Hill, from its circular shape and round, flat top; and Whitham’s Hole, a bog.

Place names are the windows that give us an insight into our most precious historic document; the landscape contains most of the evidence of our past and provides unparalleled revelations about our ancestors’ way of life, their hopes and aspirations. The intricate pattern of farmland, woods, forestry, villages, market towns, follies, sites of ancient settlement, earthworks and chalk carvings all play their part in the complex story of these islands.