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The Archaeology of some North Devon Place-Names - Terry Green (Newsletter No 5 2003)

Our place-names are a record of our ancestors’ diverse experience of their landscape and are one way in which they speak to us directly. Most of the place-names that we find on the map were established before the 12th century and because they were coined in Old English and have been distorted by usage, they now appear obscure and sometimes even comical. To those who first spoke them, however, they were clear references to features of the land that they inhabited. And for this reason, an understanding of their significance is a useful tool for the archaeologist. Below are a few reflections on some North Devon placenames. (Interpretations are based on Gover, Mawer and Stenton: Place-Names of Devon,
1932)

Marwood
(DB 1086: Meroda/Merehoda/Mereuda representing, probably, Old English gemære+wudu ‘boundary wood’.) Marwood stands on a ridge among a small cluster of woodland names on the boundary between Braunton and Shirwell Hundreds. The Doomsday record implies that before the Conquest, Braunton and Shirwell were a unit, so that a boundary must at some date have been drawn between them. It is common for boundaries to be drawn through areas of upland grazing or, as in this case, woodland. Nearby runs Mare Lane which also seems to contain the ‘boundary’ element, and just across the parish boundary more or less at the point where Marwood, Shirwell and East Down Parishes meet is Plaistow (Old English pleg-st ¯ ow ‘playing place’) This name is conventionally interpreted as something like ‘sports ground’. It is worth considering, however, that the ‘play’ involved may in origin have been ceremonial rather than mere amusement. The Cornish plen-an-gwary also means ‘playing place’, but represents the location of traditional seasonal performances. On the hilltop above Plaistow Barton is a ringwork, which may be the ‘playingplace’ itself, and at this point in the landscape may represent a ceremonial meeting-place on or near to an important boundary.

Landkey
(First record 1166: Landechei) Like related names in Cornwall, this represents Cornish lan+de+Cai ‘church of (your) Cai’. Cai was a Cornish saint. The name is one of the small number of surviving purely Celtic names in Devon. The cornish lan,Welsh llan has come to mean church, but originally meant a sacred enclosure. The traditional lan or llan was a circular or oval enclosure reserved for burials and religious purposes. In some cases this shape has been preserved in the boundaries of churchyards. This is not the case at Landkey, but at Parracombe the old church, dedicated to Saint Petrock, another Celtic saint, has a partly curving boundary. There are numerous ‘Celtic’ church dedications in the North Devon and North Somerset coastal region from Saint Nectan at Hartland to Saint Dubricius at Porlock.We cannot be certain how old these dedications are, but it seems clear that the name of Landkey records a Celtic dedication from a time when Cornish or West Welsh was still spoken in North Devon, and implies that a settlement was present here before the Western Celtic Church had been swamped by Catholic orthodoxy.

Parkham
(First recorded DB 1086: Percheham. From Old English pearroc + hamm: a tautology because both elements mean ‘enclosure’.)

This is an interesting name from a landscape point of view. A look at OS Explorer Series 126, SS35-20 & 36-20-) reveals at Parkham Ash, about two kilometres from Parkham, a neatly defined cluster of fields which clearly reflect medieval strip cultivation contained within a shape rather like a shoe-print. The fields around the Parkham Ash settlement appear to address the boundary of an oval enclosure on a low spur. In Devon the Old English hamm, which elsewhere signifies ‘land bounded by water’, frequently has the sense of ‘land taken in from moorland’. In the case of Parkham Ash, the oval on the spur is shown on the First Edition OS 6’ map (Fig.1) surrounded by unimproved grassland; and Ash sits together with Kerswell among blocks of strip fields adjacent to which is Moor Farm. At Parkham itself, on the other hand there is none of this. It is possible to suggest that the oval is the Old English pearroc, while the field system around Ash and Kerswell is the hamm, the pearroc being older; and that the combined name Park-ham has migrated across the landscape to where to the manorial centre and its Norman church now stand.

King’s, Bishop’s and George Nympton
(King’s and Bishop’s Nympton were first recorded in DB 1086 as Nymeton(a), George Nympton as
Limet, later as Nimet. Queen’s Nympton is a 19th century creation.)

The Nympton parishes lie adjacent to the River Mole and it is suggested by Ekwall (Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names , 4th edition 1960, 346) that Nymet is an old name for the Mole (Mole being a back-formation from Molton). It appears, however, that the Nymptons together may represent an ancient large land unit from which the river took its earlier name. In the Saxon period this was a royal estate, of which part was granted to the Bishop of Exeter. If all of the Nymptons represent a single large early estate, it would be quite characteristic for it to be named from a major topographic feature, so that Nymet + ton means ‘estate on the River Nymet/in the Nymet region’.

Both the River Mole and the River Yeo which flows into the Taw at Nymet Rowland (one of another cluster of Nymet names), were once called Nymet, the name having very likely been transferred to the rivers from the area through which they flow. It is generally agreed that Nymet derives from the Celtic nemeton, a widespread place-name element in the Celtic world, meaning ‘sacred place’, principally a grove or wood (Old Welsh nyfed, ‘shrine, Old Irish nemed, ‘sanctuary’) The Roman Nemetostatio (‘tax-gathering station at the sacred grove’) is generally identified with North Tawton in which Hundred the Nymets lie. Nympsfield, Glos also contains the element; as does Aquae Arnemetiae the Roman name for the spa at Buxton, Derbyshire. It occurs in numerous continental names. A late Roman source, a treatise on pagan practices, speaks about ‘de sacris silvarum quae nimidas vocant’ (of sacred places in the woods which they call nimidas) (Rivet and Smith 1979, 254)

The Nymptons and the Nymets lie within an area which, to judge by the place-names, remained heavily wooded until a relatively late date. On the south-eastern edge of this area is Morchard Bishop. Morchard (DB Morchet) represents British Celtic mor+ cet ‘great wood’. It seems possible that we have here an area with religious associations from the pre-Roman period. Any such associations remained strong enough to be maintained in the form of a district name despite the otherwise blanket removal of British Celtic place-names from Devon at the West Saxon take-over.