“Hunger” in Place-names (12 S. xi. 511).—I think that a food shortage meaning can be ruled out. Canon Bannister (‘Place-names of Herefordshire’) gives nine “hunger” names in our county, with -hill, -stone, -berry (bury), -grove, -strete, -hole and -eya terminations, the last two terminals signifying, I think, heol, a road, and ea, water, or ig, island. Of one name—Clehonger (cle being clay)—he quotes twelve forms from 1015 to 1346, and they range through the forms -hangre, -hungre, and and -hongre. This confirms my own impression (gathered in the course of my trackway work) that “hanger” and “hunger” place-names, both common, are identical in original meaning. Canon Bannister traces it through the old word hangra, which is usually translated as “a wood on a steep hill-side,” and Gilbert White, in his ‘Selborne,’ uses it in this sense. But I am forming the opinion (and look for further evidence), that its meaning in pre-historic times (before written records) was not a wooded bank, but the deeply cut straight road or track used as a sighting cutting up the bank. At our local “Hungerstone” such a road is sighted through a pond at its foot on to Thruxton Mound. Hongar House (St. Weonards) is at the head of a similar cutting, and at New Radnor, where there is a sunk road now called Newgate Lane, up the bank straight for a cottage now called Sunny Bank, I found that old people called this cottage “Hunger Spot.”
Fords are often under banks, and Hungerford is frequent as a place-name. Will correspondents kindly report whether at places so named a steep sunk road sights down a bank to the ford?
Will anyone who knows the Hanger at Selborne or that in the Rectory grounds at Burgh Castle (Norfolk) also report on the
sunk roads down the banks there?
Alfred Watkins.
Hereford.
Source info: MS note by AW “Notes and Queries Jan 6 1923”.