Alfred Watkins, “Seasonal Place-Names”

Word-Lore, 3 (1928), 6–8.

With criticisms by F.G. Roe and H. Askew, and a reply by Watkins.

I am convinced that a large number of place-names referring to the seasons are derived from being on the sites of mark-points on the ancient alignments, which, formed across country, pointed to sunrise or sunset on the seasonal dividing days, and thus took the place of a calendar with early folk.

The basis for the proof of this is not my own investigation or theory, but facts divulged within the past third of a century by the reliable investigators I will now quote.

Mr. Magnus Spence in the Orkneys, and Mr. A. L. Lewis and Sir Norman Lockyer (Astronomer Royal), in various localities, found that in many stone-circles one stone aligned through another to a third object on the sky-line (a hill-top, cairn or barrow, or a standing stone), and on to the horizon where the sun rose on a quarter or half-quarter day. Strange to say, these observations were treated with considerable contempt in some quarters.

Recently another skilled observer, Admiral Boyle Somerville, has thoroughly tested another set of circles, and found a similar set of facts. I have found that these alignments continued for long distances over other stones, mounds, &c., and thus brought the seasonal information home to many more of the population than if limited to one spot.

Now it is quite probable that places on such alignments would get named after the season to which the sunrise (or sunset) pointed. And in fact Admiral Somerville’s details gave one such instance, for a stone circle on Beltany Hill in Donegal had stones which aligned to sunrise on May Day or Bealltaine as it was called. Such May Day observations survive in fact, for on May morning the choristers assemble on Magdalen Tower, Oxford, and sing a hymn to the rising sun, and although want of local survey prevents me from verifying this tower as a spot on a May alignment angle, the map seems to show one through Christchurch or Oxford Cathedral.

I now give some topographical proofs of the connection between seasonal names and the alignments.

{7} Sunrising Hill in Oxfordshire has an alignment over it through Middle Tysoe and Ratley Churches, and on through the Three Shire Stone to a hill-point, and this is at 49½ degrees, approximately Midsummer sunrise angle.

I found another Sunrising spot (a hamlet) in an old one inch Ord. Map bought over forty years ago for a Cornish coast tramp. Trying again the 49½ degrees angle, it goes exactly through two barrows about two miles away. (This is 10 miles N.W. of Truro.)

A still more convincing group of names is in the same map, four miles E.N.E. of Truro. Here are four homesteads arranged in the form of a diamond, all within about half-a-mile, as below, where the dots indicate the positions of the houses

Here an alignment between Fair Weather and Sunrising, east and west, points to Equinoctial sunrise, and passes through two barrows three miles distant. One between Summer and Sunrising is also confirmed as an alignment by going through the vallum of a camp called Carvoza at a distance. This connection (often observed) between seasonal alignments and camps is referred to (and I think proved) by a Welsh idiom for sunset, “The sun has gone out below his cairns.” There is no confirmation of the Winter line, and neither that nor Summer are at the right quarter or half-quarter day angles. I am inclined to think that they are late survivals, indicating points when the sunrise showed the approach of Summer or Winter as the case was.

I do not know that all the Summer place-names so originate. They are many, for I find six or seven Summer Hills, which may be sighting points for the Midsummer Alignments, and indeed we have a Midsummer Hill with earthworks. There are Summerston and Summerley, and a Summer Lane Head. Two names with some confirmation I find in West Summer Lease and East Summer Lease, for an alignment through both (to Equinoctial sunrise) goes to a Beacon Field through Holesworthy Church. Now lease is the plural of ley, but I will not trail coat-tails by dwelling on the fact that I regard the early meaning of ley to be aligned track.

Winter is a common element in the Winterbornes and Winterbournes—about thirty of them. But I have no evidence regarding them. There are Winterslow and Winterton.

Of May Hills I find a number, and all I know are sighting-points, probably to the Beltane alignments for the Spring half- quarter day, as are the many Bell Hills, as Bell Hill in Norfolk with a Belton Church near, through both which Mr. W. A. Dutt finds a ley confirmed by standing stones. Close to is a Somerleyton Place.

{8} Maiden names seem to originate from May, and have the same origin. I find four Maiden Bowers, and one a point on a hillridge marked by Scotch Firs which I photographed aligning through Dartmouth and Kingswear Castles. Also three Maiden Castles earthworks. It is impossible to mistake the reference of the three Maiden Pap hill-points, for it occurs again in a great rounded bosom of a hill in Radnorshire, with a pointed hillock on its apex, its name being Hopton Titterhill.

I should surmise Maiden to have been May Down or dun originally. There is a Maiden Stone, Maybury, Maydown, and Mayford, all points on tracks.

Sun names, as Sunadale, Sunbury, Sunton, with Sundon, Sundhope, and Sundridge (for the “d” is evidently intruded), are surmises as yet. So too the Sol names. Solomon’s Tump in Gloucestershire, with a good mark-stone I found to be aligned between May Hill and Robin Hoods Hill. And then I found Solomon place-names to be not infrequent. There is a Solsbury Camp, near Bath.

Gold names are I think chiefly on alignments at Midsummer sunrise angle, for I found such an alignment to pass through the Gold Post on the Black Mountains, the Golden Well in the valley, Arthur’s Stone, a dolmen on a ridge, and to The Knapp, a mounded up sighting point.

Gole is modern Welsh for “light, splendour,” and the “d” is again (as it is in Cold Harbour) an intrusion. Cole in fact was gole, changed by the Celtic fashion of mutation. Llangolman, in Pembroke, is given by a Celtic scholar as St. Colman’s Church. Gold Hills are quite frequent, as are mark-stones called Gold Stone.

The Easton, Weston, Norton, and Sutton places are evidently called from having the cardinal-point relation to some other place or object. I do not know or claim that they all come into the origins I speak of. But some of them might. East Castle, on Salisbury Plain, is in alignment between the northern embankments of Bilbury Rings and Grovelly Castle. Easterley Camp seems a significant name. The Easter alignment would be near May Day, and such a line does pass through Easterton Down and convincing points and road fragments.

Spring names again await investigation. Spring Hills and Springfields are frequent, and there is a Spring Mount. I am not sure but that the Primrose Hills (there are four at least, all sighting points), are pointers in a Spring sunrise line, prime being an early name for this budding season.

For explicit meaning the Cronk yn Tree Laa, or Hill of the Rise of Day, in the Isle of Man, should head my list. Cronk being a “Tout-hill.” The Somerset place-names are not all in that county, and we have a Sunset place in Herefordshire to which the setting sun just comes down a narrow valley at one season.

Criticism by F.G. Roe, Word-Lore, 3 (1928), 59.

I have no intention of criticising Mr. Watkins’ article on “Seasonal Place-Names” piece by piece. Two items alone, which are neither better nor worse founded on evidence than any others, will suffice as examples of speculative dogmatism. First, Somerleyton as evidence of a “ley.” Somerleyton, Suff., is from sumerlida—a “summer sailor,” i.e., a viking who went out in summer-time. (Sumerledetún, in a charter, so Isaac Taylor, 1896) “Eng. Village Names,” in Words and Places, Everyman ed., p. 220; where Somerby, Leics., is shown in Domesday Book as Sumerlidebie.) Of a piece with this is “lease as the pl. of ley.” Lesing in certain Old and Middle Eng. dialects was both lying (i.e., untruth) and losing. As though any student worthy the name would attempt to base any argument on M.E. spelling! 2. The “d” in Cold harbour an “intrusion.” Once again, give us authority, Mr. Watkins, for this assertion! Many years ago this subject was agitated in Notes and Queries. 142 were cited in several counties (N. and Q., 2 S. vi., 143, 317); more again (Ibid, 3 S. vii., 344; 10 S., i., 413). For various derivations see Ibid, 2 S., ix., 139; xi., 335; 3 S., viii., 303; 6 S, xi., 122, 290; 9 S., i., 17, 373, 457. See also New Eng. Dict., sub voc, and Chief Elements Eng. Place-Names (Eng. P.N. Soc., 1924), p. 36. The general consensus of opinion in Notes and Queries seemed to support Skeat’s dictum that Cold Harbour “means what it says”—a place where shelter might be obtained, but no comfort. (N. and Q., 9 S., i., 457.) Mr. Watkins furnishes the best conceivable commentary (if such were needed) on Mr. F. J. Allen’s weighty little article on “Speculative versus Historical Folk-Lore,” which introduces Vol. III. of Word-Lore.

Criticism by H. Askew, Word-Lore, 3 (1928), 84.

I am with Mr. F. G. Roe and against Mr. Watkins in the matter of Cold Harbour. I can find no evidence that the “d” in “Cold” is an intrusion. In fact, all available information shows that such is not the case.

Professor Weekley, in “More Words Ancient and Modern” (1927) says “This name (Cold Harbour) is very frequently, and very unnecessarily, discussed. Its origin is quite well known, and it means what it appears to mean.”

Professor Skeat would have nothing to do with what he called fanciful derivations, such as the suggested “Cole Arbour,” a corruption of Colonia arborum, or the also suggested idea that it is derived from col, an eminence, and arbhar, an army. This authority proceeds to say “There never was at any time the slightest doubt amongst scholars who are acquainted with the history of our language that cold harbour is composed of cold and harbour. Nothing but the love of paradox stands in the way.”

It is recorded of an old Yorkshire farmer that he said of a tumbledown barn in which he and his hinds sought refuge, “Hegh lads, but there’s cauld harbour here.” Evidently amongst the rural population of the shire of broad acres a Cold Harbour was understood to be a place of refuge from the weather for wayfarers.

Thomas Wright, in his “History of English Culture” understood the expression in this sense, and so did the famous diarist, John Evelyn, and he so uses the term in the account of his travels in the Alps.

One instance of Cole Harbour does, however, occur. On the coast of Nova Scotia there is a bay known as Cole Harbour, but why, is not known. It is used in a rhyme by which an inquisitive person is snubbed for his prying propensities.

“Some say the devil’s dead,
And buried in Cole Harbour;
Some say he’s rose again,
And ’prenticed to a barber.”

Reply by Watkins, Word-Lore, 3 (1928), 84–85.

I willingly respond to Mr. Roe’s request for my authority for my conclusion that the “d” in Cold Harbour is an intrusion, and the strong mass of evidence for this being a fact in many of the Cold names is not in the least weakened because no-one has brought forward this evidence before.

First, the extreme unlikeliness of the first element having always the “chilly” meaning in place names is apparent in such combinations as Cold Ash, Cold Oak, Cold Elm, Cold Nose, Coldstone, Coldman’s Hill.

Then the following direct evidence of the fact of intrusion. In a 1597 map of the Tower of London in Green’s Short History of England a small tower is marked Cole Harbour, and this is the spot several times referred to as Cold Harbour in the libretto of Gilbert’s Yeoman of the Guard.

In Ben Jonson’s Silent Woman, and also in Healy’s Discovery of a New World, there are places referred to as Cole Harbour.

The name without the “d” also survived in a local folk song at New Radnor of a celebrity who had his name from wearing silver buttons, on which account he is said to have been killed (he came from an adjacent village) by New Radnor men. Thus:—

And when I asked my aged informant if it was not “Cold Harbour,” he said emphatically that it was Cole.

In English Antiquities, 1771, p. 147, Cold Harbarde House in London is mentioned in the text, but named Cole Harbour in the margin. This is probably the “great house called Cold Harbrough” of Stowe (Survey of London), who mentions it as having an arched gate leading to it with the “Steeple and Quire of All Hallows the Less built on it.”

Now for collateral evidence of other Cold place names besides the Harbours having an earlier form of Cole, to which in some cases they revert, P.N. referring to the English Place-Name Society’s books.

Worcester P.N., p. 30, Coldridge Wood was Colrugge in the Lyttelton Charters. At p. 82 Cold Grove or Cold Place was Col Grove in 1521, and Colles Place in the 17th c.

Bucks P.N., p. 170, the Collmanstrop of 1634 had become Coldthorpe in 1821, and is now Colstrope. At p. 236, regarding Colenorton Brook, it takes its name from a toft called Coldnorton, mentioned in 1449, and Colle Norton, in 1572.

In Reynold’s Churches of City of London (1922) one is mentioned as St. Nicholas Cole (Cold) Abbey. Stowe’s Survey, Book 3, p. 209, mentions it as “St. Nicholas Cold Abby called by many Golden Abby (or Gold Bey), but I could never learn the cause.” On p. 219 he names it both as St. Nicholas Cold Abby and Cole Abby. Now I had not looked up Stowe until now and readers will note the fact that in my article I associated Gold, Cold and Cole as probably different forms from a common origin in many place names, not knowing this actual record of the three names being associated by old Stowe with one church.

A strange corroboration of my surmise (from ample evidence) that Cole, meaning a man practicing skilled work, often became Cold in place names, is found in the N.E.D. under Cole prophet (a wizard, diviner). “The later cold prophet (Lyly’s Euphues) is evidently a perversion of popular etymology. It shows that the sense of cole was forgotten by 1579, also that the word had in the 16th c. a long o and was not M.E. Cole-cool.” The dictionary also gives cole as a rare obscure word, meaning wizard.

Another corroboration of my surmise connecting the cole or cold man with the straight sighted track is to be found in Major Dunning’s recent Roman Road to Portslade, p. 144. “ A straight line drawn from the Cold Harbour Farm (S. of the Ham Farm fragment), passes right through the Coldharbour 2 miles west of Selsfield Common, past a third one (now Gollard’s Farm, near New Chapel), and through a fourth Coldharbour on the southern slope of Tilburstow Hill near Godstone.”