Essex Place names

The Essex Place-names database contains names of fields, roads, inns, houses, farms, manors, places, rivers, streams, woods, etc, and names of owners, tenants, landlords, parties to agreements etc, recorded from historic documents such as Tithe Awards, Rental Agreements, Surveys, Maps, Rolls, Inquisitions, Deeds, Charters.

The database is therefore of use to historians, genealogists, linguists, archaeologists and philologists. It is hoped its use will lead to identification and distribution of archaeolgical sites and historic buildings, will enable analysis of place-names as an indicator of early settlement, landholding and agricultural practices, will refine more precisely descriptive words and word-elements given by early settlers to topgraphical features, enable family historians to trace back owners and occupiers of land.

The Essex Place-names Project has been supported by Council for British Archaeology, Essex County Council, Essex Heritage Trust, Essex Society for Archaeology & History, 'Awards for All: Lottery Grants for Local Groups' and the Friends of Historic Essex.

It is interesting to see some of the field names, some of which give a clue as to their use, e.g. ‘lower ten acres’, ‘three cornered field’, ‘orchard’, ‘arable field’, ‘sawpit field’. Some names are less clear.

Lets look at some of the field names in the four parishes.

Greensted:

Quashey Lea
Canal
Cockshotts
Walk by Canal
Easy Bottom
Starve Goose Field
Night Leys

Stanford Rivers

Pig Riddon
Hither Ribbon
Hilly Wardens
Further Hilly Wardens
Botany Bay
Small Gains
Nooking Field
The Slipe
First Hither Shots
Old Tory

Stapleford Tawney

Blaze meadow
Nooking Field
South Liquorish Field
North Liquorish Field
Night Leaze

Theydon Mount

Little Fulwells Bottom
Further Fulwells
Gallows Croft
Hunger Down Wood