Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/50

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9< s. m. JAN. 21,

name Steinhang in Germany, where there is a precipice with overhanging stones. Stennis in Orkney, a cape with two circles of great standing stones, is the "Stone-ness." At Stariton Drew in Somerset there is a group of stone circles with avenues. It was sup- posed by Stukeley to mean "the stone town of the Druids," an impossible and absurd ety- mology which a year or two ago was gravely propounded and defended by an able writer in the columns of a leading London daily paper. The affix Drew, which is later than Domesday, where the name is stan tune, was doubtless derived from Drogo or Dreux, a former owner. Kirkstone, a pass near Amble- side, is so called from a perched glacial erratic which is thought to resemble a church.

In the churchyard of Rudston in the East Riding there is an enormous block of mill- stone grit, on which a rood or cross must have been erected, as is indicated by the Domesday name Rudestan or Rodestein, the " rood stone." Conspicuous stones, probably monoliths of pre-Teutonic date, were natur- ally often used for hundred-moots. Thus we have the names of the hundred of Stone in Bucks (D.B. Stanes), Stone in Somerset (Hundred Rolls de la stane), and Stane in Cambridgeshire (H.R. Stane}. Whitstone hundred, Staffordshire (D.B. Whitstari), was the " white stone." The most curious hun- dred name is that of Ossulston hundred in Middlesex (H.R. Ousolvestan, D.B. Osulvestone, "Oswulf's stone"), so called from a Roman stone of geometric shape, supposed to have been a milestone, which stood at Tyburn Gate, now the Marble Arch, Hyde Park. We have personal names in the hundreds of Cuddlestone in Staffordshire (H.R. Cuthulfe- stari), Kin ward stone in Wilts (H.R. Kyne- wardestan), Tibbaldstone (H.R. Thebaldestan) and Dudstone (H.R. Duddestan), both in Glou- cestershire, as well as Bishopstone in Sussex.

Brighton is a corruption of the A.-S. name Brihthelmestan, which means the "stone of Brihthelm." There was a South Saxon bishop of that name. The word stan may mean a stone house or castle, a boundary stone, or a stone marking a place for a religious or popular assembly. It has been conjectured that Brihthelm's stone may have been set up on the Old Steyne, to which it gave a name, but this is doubtful, as the greater part of the old village was swept away by the sea in 1599. The Old Steyne more probably took its name from a brick pavement.

"Stone" is probably used like the Irish clachan or cloghan, " stones," which not only means a ford crossed by a row of stepping stones, or the stones in a churchyard, but

also a stone castle. In the Flemish colony in South Wales stone or ston as a topographic suffix usually denotes a stone castle. The analogy of the German Backstein suggests that these castles may have been of brick, as they often were in Flanders.

ISAAC TAYLOR.

THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE PLACE-NAME OXFORD.

THE name is supposed to make its first appearance as Oxnaforda, or Oksnaforda, on coins of the time of King Alfred, and the ox crossing the ford has hitherto maintained its place as the emblem of its origin.

Among the Anglo-Saxon charters relating to Abingdon Abbey is one of King Ed reel, A.D. 955. That charter recites the boundaries of the land which Cead walla, King of the West Saxons, gave to the abbey in A.D. 685-8. In a charter of Edwy, A.D. 952, the boundaries of the abbey land as then existing are men- tioned, but in that of Edred, three years later, the ancient boundaries of Cead walla's grant are stated, as if to settle some dispute. It is not possible to identify all these ancient boundary names, but a sufficient number of them can be identified to leave no doubt about the land the charter describes. The name Eoccenforda in this charter has hitherto been supposed to be some ford over the Ock stream, near Abingdon; but this is a mis- take. The original abbey was, according to tradition, which appears to be well founded, situated at the south-west of Bagley Wood, where its site is still marked on the large- scale Ordnance maps. Leland says, "The abbey was first begun in Bagley Wood," and that site is two or three miles north of the town of Abingdon. The names Eoccenes and Eccenes have hitherto been identified only with the river Ock, but they occur in other charters relating to land boundaries at Ash- bury in Berkshire, Welford near Newbury, and elsewhere.

The word edc is a participle, derived from the Anglo-Saxon edcan, to increase, and cen or ken is the Old Frisian form of the Anglo- Saxon kin, so that e6ccenes denotes the in- creased kindred or surplus population. Eoccenes is a colonial or new settlement name.

In a paper I brought before the Anthro- pological Section of the British Association at Bristol in September last I showed that there are strong proofs arising from the ancient place-names and the survival of Kentish customs of settlements of early Kentish colonists up the Thames Valley, and