I love English place names

I bought a book on English place names during a prior trip to England when we were in the Midlands, and it has given me a great deal of pleasure.  I mean, how can you possibly top village names like Upper Piddle and Lower Piddle?  Or Lickey End?  Or Letch Lane?  (Is that Lois’s disreputable brother?)

Once you get the hang of them, it’s fun to make additional such names up, to operate as a kind random generator.  Here are a few of my own hasty creation:

Sodding Chumbury

Bishops Lolly

Preston Waddlethwaite

Monk Binglethorpe

Dander-on-Slamsbottom

St. Bilge’s Cross

I bought another small book on the subject here, on this trip.  One focused specifically on toponyms in the Lake District.  By far, most of the names in this area have their origins in Old Norse.

And I’ve found another favorite:  Barf.

Barf is a fell, or barren mountain, in the northwestern part of Cumbria’s Lake District.

And closely associated with Barf is a famous feature called Bishop’s Rock or, even better, The Bishop of Barf.

The Bishop of Barf is a seven-to-ten foot high whitewashed pillar of rock at an elevation of about seven hundred feet on the stony lower slopes of Barf that is clearly visible from the road between Cockermouth (the birthplace of Wordsworth) and Keswick, which we drove just this afternoon.  It marks the spot where, according to local legend, the Bishop of Derry was killed in 1783 by a fall from his horse, having drunkenly wagered that he could ride up the hill.  Both the Bishop and his horse, which apparently died in the same accident — although there is no reason to believe that the horse was as plastered as its master — are said to be buried near a much smaller stone, the Clerk, at the base of Barf.  For many years, the Bishop of Barf was whitewashed each year by staff at the nearby Swan Hotel.  But then the Hotel was converted to apartments, so the whitewashing is now carried out by members of Keswick Mountain Rescue.

Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England