2025 01 Spring with bleed - Flipbook - Page 24
What’s in a name? The origins of oeld names.
Zoë Elkins
In the Grove, there9s a map which caught our
eye, which shows the old oeld names for many of
the farms in and around King9s Nympton. But the
two oelds which are still part of Venn Farm,
where we live, are not named. This led us to
wonder what the old names for our oelds might
be, and we found a company called Your Forgotten Fields, who will
map the original oeld names and historic ownerships, as ordnance
survey maps rarely have this level of detail. The oeld names come from
a series of maps called 8Devon in
18439, and it9s impossible to say
how old the names really are, as
this was simply the orst time they
were written down ofocially.
Field names were usually
between 1-3 words long. The last
word would often have been
simply 8oeld9, or 8close9 (short for
8enclosure) or park (another word
for oeld). Sometimes 8plot9 would
be used to denote a very small
parcel of land. The orst word would often be an
adjective, distinguishing the oeld from its neighbours, possibly by its
compass orientation, size, height or proximity to the farm. For
example, East or West, Higher or Lower, Great or Small. Home, Homer,
Inn and Hither all mean 8near the farm9 while Over, Outer and Yonder
mean 8further away from the farm9. Church close may not mean a oeld
near a church, but might mean the oeld closest to the church for this
particular farm, or the oeld where you can see the church steeple from.
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for extra content— www.kingsnymptononline.com/additional-material
