Egypt, Bucks
Peter Levi
A Concise Dictionary of Modern Place Names in Great Britain and Ireland Adrian Room (Oxford University Press £8.95)
Ekwall's Oxford Dictionary of English 1—:‘ Place Names really is a standard reference book. Life would be infinite- simally diminished without it. But the publishers have gone mad, and now they seem to be producing the Oxford Book of nearly everything — advertising slogans, bad jokes, hostile book reviews, and modern place names. Milton Keynes is not in, because that is an ancient name. Eel Pie Island is in, but not Monkey Island, which is not in anything. Nor is Hampton Court, I suppose because it is not officially a district. The subject is all right, but modern place names make a thin book, and the problems of what it should include are infuriating.
Ekwall treats all ten thousand of the old names of places in England, including the more interesting estates, hamlets and farms, and those capes, hills and bays for the names of which early evidence was found. One knows what to expect: all England, only England, and within that practically everything. He has missed the old Oxford district name of Bullingdon, or was the field named after the Club, and the name in- vented? Also Splip End near Whipsnade, but otherwise I have never faulted Ekwall.
But Adrian Room has so few places to choose from that he covers the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, so that outside England one never knows whether his silence means inadvertence, or an ancient place name which would have been in Ekwall if Ekwall had extended that far.
One wants a reference book to be com- plete. The trouble is that people who would
not invest in Some Modern Place Names will
be tempted by an Oxford Book of them. If they buy this one they can read about In- vergordon but not about Inveraray, the se- cond name being, I imagine, ancient. Sir William Gordon bought the 13th-century castle and estate at Inverbreckie, planned the new town and named it; his old son sold it but the name stuck. The building was in the second half of the 18th century. But the Argylls built Inveraray at the same mo- ment; it is one of the most distinguished 18th-century new towns in Europe. It is a pity neither of these Oxford dictionaries in- cludes it.
That is enough grumbling. The game of checking between the two dictionaries is most enjoyable. Kensington and Cooden Beach and Highgate are ancient, but New Cross and Camden Town are modern. One is not surprised to hear New Cross was a crossroads, not a Christian monument, but who knew that Lord Camden took his title from Camden Place in Kent, named after the great antiquarian? He acquired Kentish Town, which was in Middlesex, by mar- riage, and numerous street names record his ramifications. Plenty of people must know that the Fleetwood Hesketh family are hard to distinguish from the Hesketh Fleet- woods, and that Fleetwood is or was their washpot. The architect was Decimus Bur- ton, and they lived at Rossall. Nor is it hard to guess the origins of Enham Alamein or of Royal British Legion Village, which changed its name to Royal when the British Legion did the same.
And one can see why the new name sometimes failed to take. Ellesmere Port was named by 1796 after Ellesmere in Shropshire at the upper end of the canal, but when the railway arrived in 1863 people were still saying Whitby Locks, and that was the name the station consecrated. One must admit this book is full of valuable knowledge. I spent hours as a boy wonder- ing how the station at Rayner's Lane and the awful human settlement there had got their name. It was from an old shepherd called Rayner who lived there at the end of a lane. He died in 1905, the station came in 1906. It was nothing but a junction, the human settlement followed the station name.
The same laws appear to govern the most beautiful of names and the most banal. It was a bit of a shock to find our rustic local river, the Evenlode, listed among modern names. Belloc calls it the perfect Evenlode, the wandering Evenlode which holds a hun- dred little towns of stone forgotten in the Western wolds. Adrian Room says it was formerly called the Bladon, and Bladon and Bledington are named after it. Small wonder it changed its name. Four Elms and Nine Elms were named after their trees, which perished more than a hundred years ago; today they have a terribly sad sound. Friday Street is another field name, com- monly given to poor, bad land, though at Friday Street in Surrey they maintain there was once a man called Friday. Some names are darkly obscure: the Isle of Dogs could be named after dead dogs or royal hounds, or just the Isle of Ducks. One may place one's bet.
One of the pleasantest modern names is a place in Wales where a 19th-century minister used to baptise in a bend of the river, and later a village grew up. But why no reference to Juniper Green, on the edge of Northamptonshire, which we know to be a new name, the place being a squatters' settlement on a heath, the Lark Rise of Flora Thompson? And what about the village of Egypt, which I recollect on signposts near Burnham Beeches? We hear all about the Juniper Green in Edinburgh, and the Joppa in Edinburgh, though without any very convincing explanation. In southern France, the migrant thrushes shot feeding on the junipers that took over abandoned farms used to be thought to taste delicious: the juniper is the tree of desolation, and Flora Thompson's and the Edinburgh Juniper Green were both once colonies on the moor. I would prefer to live there than in Jemimaville, named after Lady Munro in 1836 by the fourth Laird of Poyntzfield. I would not like to live there either.
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