Gain Place Names In The Landscape Curated By Margaret Gelling Rendered As Print

book is concerned with topographical placenames not those named for people, etc and the chapters are:

Rivers, Marshes, River Crossings/roads, Valleys, Hills, Woodland and Ploughland

This book is both excellent and poor at the same time.
The level of expertise is remarkable, as you'd expect from Gelling, but as a reading experience it leaves a heck of a lot to be desired,

Within each chapter there is a brief overview and then an AZ of the various old English/Norse and sometimes Welsh placename elements with accounts of how and why various places within the precounty boundaries are called that.
This makes it sound more interesting than it really is, After you've seen the first dozen or so, probably called this because of the , then you've seen the next few hundred, Unless it is a place you actually know, your enthusiasm for discovering that somewhere at the other end of the kingdom might be named for a spur it sits on in contrast to what earlier placename experts actually suggested quickly wanes.


A lot of the writing is a sea of examples and county abbreviations, Some passages are quite lengthy, especially for the more common elements of placenames, but the longer the entry, the less there is to enjoy, The nine pages discussing arguments about various Hams is tedious at least Tommy Cooper was funny with his East Ham, West Ham, Oldham joke,

This is also not a book that you will learn much from, Not because it's not chockfull of stuff, quite the opposite, It is the level of specialist knowledge that makes it so difficult to learn much beyond the basics, You find that you have to take Gelling's word for what she's saying, because it is in no way possible to form your own firm conclusions, To do so you need: a map, local knowledge of conditions now, ideally local knowledge of conditions when the place was named, knowing the oldest spelling of the name, old English/Norse/Welsh Latin and also how they have changed during the years.


Things you'll take away from this book:

, One for experts, only so much you can take from it and hope to remember,
, Clofesho is probably Brixworth the Clof element fits with the stream whose valley cuts the western edge of the spur the settlement is on.

, There is an interesting book to be had on placenames, but this isn't it,
In this text, the author presents details of her

research on the way in which numerous placenames are strongly rooted in the physical features of the land.
Using a thematic approach, she describes how varied physical characteristics, such as hills and valleys, trees and forests, marshes, moors, springs and lakes have shaped placenames and establishes a general picture of a people in possession of a vast and topographical vocabulary.
Well, partly read. This is not a book for the casual reader, Margaret Joy Gelling was an English place name scholar, She worked as a research assistant for the English place names society during thes ands, later she was involved in teaching and lecturing as part of the University of Birminghams Extra Mural studies programme.
She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in, Margaret Joy Gelling was an English place name scholar, She worked as a research assistant for the English place names society during thes ands, later she was involved in teaching and lecturing as part of the University of Birmingham's Extra Mural studies programme.
She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in, sitelink.