Off The Record
Field names can help us understand our rural ancestors’ lives, says Alan Crosby
How field names shed light on our rural ancestors’ lives
It’s March, and the annual cycle of agricultural activity is gathering pace. Today much of the work in arable areas is mechanised, but for our forebears this time of year ushered in the six months of hardest work, which continued until mid-September and the end of harvest time. They were in tune with the seasons, the changing length of the night and day and the calendar of tasks that had to be done – no matter the circumstances. They were vigilant about the weather, and seized every opportunity to make the most of warmer, drier times (“make hay while the sun shines”). Lambing and calving, milking and sowing, weeding and hoeing… you couldn’t avoid or evade these labours, and everybody had a role to play, from small children bird-scaring to old women gleaning.
The names they gave their fields reflect the direct relationship between the agricultural community and the environment that was all around. Field names reveal an intimate understanding of soils, drainage, geology, fertility and natural history, and often have a wry and dry humour. Of course,
‘Some names remind us of the sheer hard labour and heavy toil of farmwork’
many fields were given very ordinary names (‘Long Meadow’, ‘Higher Close’, ‘Cow Pasture’), but there is a tremendous richness of dialect and imagination is so many others.
I was reminded of this recently when reading a 1784 document relating to land at Skelton near Carlisle, which mentioned a field called Bare Arse Close. Though perhaps a little startling at first reading, such names are not that unusual. The dictionary of English field names produced by the late John Field (and what better name could he have!) refers to that name in Cheshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire and Hampshire, and to other ‘bare’ names such as ‘Bare Bones’, all of them being “derogatory names for unproductive land”.
Other “derogatory names” remind us of the sheer hard labour and unremitting toil of farmwork before the age of mechanisation, and of the heavy burden and small returns involved in cultivating poor and infertile ground. The fields called ‘Labour in Vain’, found in Dorset, Gloucestershire and Hertfordshire among other counties, could not be named more evocatively. ‘Break Back’ and ‘Broken Back’, ‘Raw Bones’, ‘Purgatory’, ‘Sodom Field’, ‘Hunger Hill’, ‘Starve Acre’, ‘Wearisome’, ‘Heartache’, ‘Everlasting’ (as in the work needed) and ‘Hard Labour’ are all examples of the bitter thoughts our forebears must have had while slogging away in such places.
Good land, though, might be complimented by an affectionate name. I rather like the sense of ‘Have a Good Heart’, a field at Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire that was problem-free and easy to work, and names such as ‘Sweet Bit’, ‘Sweet Piece’ and ‘Sweet Tooth’ occur quite frequently (although more rarely in upland or marginal areas of the country). ‘Rich Field’ and ‘Richland’, ‘Easy Furlong’, ‘Butter Croft’ and ‘Good Fortune’, ‘Sugar Acres’ and ‘Sucklesome’ all reflect the pleasure that farmers and labourers derived from knowing that a piece of land was of high quality: straightforward to cultivate, and likely to give good yields and worthwhile returns.
Field names are often overlooked by family historians, although local historians research them extensively. But if you use tithe maps and apportionments and locate land that was farmed by your forebears, it’s well worth checking on the names of the fields they worked. It might tell you a good deal about their land, and how they regarded it. Who could fail to pity an ancestor who, doubtless cursing as he hauled the plough, sought to make productive use of the land at Norton Lindsey in Warwickshire that was vividly named, who knows how long ago, ‘Devil’s Own’!