Field Names - What do they tell us?

By Richard Watson

The area we live in, the western sea-board of Amounderness, has a rich legacy of field names. They tell us not only of the condition, shape, usefulness, and even the name of a former occupier, but they often are traceable in similar form to documents that have survived from the Middle Ages.

Amounderness did not belong to the formerly much promulgated medieval three-field system of agriculture so firmly established in the Midlands and South-East of England, we had a predominantly oat and grass growing economy and were not reliant on the wheaten loaf as the basic food, the climate in North West saw to that. The agriculturists in our area, not being subject to an equal allotment of strips in the Town-fields, held what they could successfully husband and, of course, afford. There was much enclosure of our small arable lands (or fields) in the North West during medieval times and by comparing the field names inscribed in the Cockersand Chartulary with those that were current in the second quarter of the nineteenth century and listed in the various Tithe Award maps, we see a remarkable number of survivals.

In 1265 at Preesall with Hackensall certain lands known as Littleclod, Muckleclod and Clodiscar were still there in 1840 and, with modern subdivisions, listed as Little Clod, Great Clod, Clods Carr Meadow, Great Clods Carr, East Clods Carr and West Clods Carr. Pilling had Court Meadow and Chapel Meadow in 1272. Some land survives in Pilling called Susterscales (Norse for sisters houses) which shows a remarkable survival, although it is generally agreed today that until the fourteenth century the normal daily speech of this area was a Gaelic Norse dialect and the name might only date from then.

Winmarleigh today has Crawley Cross, the Crawley part of which was in 1246 Crawelache. In 1241 there was in Claughton land called Dounanesherg, land today known as Dandy Birk, the first element of which is the Gaelic personal name Dunan combined with airgh or erg meaning a sheiling or summer pasture. The three Lickows in Preesall were there in 1250 as Licot and Longlands in Stalmine was so listed in 1260.

Some of the commoner descriptive elements in local field names, often combined with other descriptions such as field, close, meadow, pasture, are bend (coarse grass), Brock (Badger), Brow, Brew or Breck (a slope or hill), Coddy (a young foal), Dig (duck), Fleet (a channel of water, a creek), Flat (wet land overgrown 'Maykins' in the Fylde), Furlong (a furrow long piece of land), Leach with wild iris, (a lake or land regularly flooded), Owler, Oller, Eller (where trees grow), Parrock (a small enclosure), Ridding or Rudding (an area of cleared land, Scale (a building), Scough (a wood), Slack (a hollow), Spaw (a spring), Stoop (a post, standing stone), Withins, Withy, Wellen (Willow Trees), Whin (a type of furze eg. whinberry-bilberry) and dozens more.

It is surprising how minor location names, such as the above, enable one to uncover the various language changes in a given area, all in themselves indicating changes in the administrative class to whom taxes and renders of cattle and goods were paid.