So, “what’s in a name?” It has been said, with some justification, that place names are signposts to the past and nowhere is this better exemplified than in Cumbria. Settled and colonized by Celts and Anglians, by Danes, Irish-Norse and Normans, the place name maps of the county tell their own fascinating story. The elements glen, a valley, and pen, a hill, still to be found in Wales, are distant echoes of the indigenous British people; the -ton and -ham endings speak of the Anglian farmers who cultivated the fertile soils of the Eden Valley, the West Cumbrian plain and Low Furness, while the thwaites, fells, forces, and becks of our Norse ancestors bristle on the current map of the Lake District as they do on modern maps of Norway. In short, those nameless men and women who tilled the land, felled the forest, herded their sheep, pigs, and cattle, and created a network of fields, hamlets, and villages also stamped their characteristic place names indelibly on mountain and moorland, fell and forest, lake and lowland for later generations to read and decipher. Joan Lee’s delightful and diligent survey of Cumbria’s place names provides us with the means to interpret that landscape; it will appeal to the curious traveller intrigued by the names on signposts, to the student of both history and geography, to the casual tourist, to offcomer and native alike - indeed, to all those who know and love this most beautiful part of north west England.
William Rollinson
William Rollinson
