and a glegg* at the wonderful painted wooden panels in the roodscreen.
How old? Oh, I can't recall. Let's say fifteenth century until someone tells me, actually Grit, 1986.
Then it becomes really strange. We spend several hours and walk several miles following an elderly gentleman. He leads us about a lot of fields. They have names like Lower Starvation, Sawpit, Little crouches, Meisy stocking, Prize fight, Eat the dead, Horse close, Sheep walk, Top nashes, and Gomery piece. (Go on, spot the one I made up.)
Here are the pictures. Somewhere we saw a grass snake and I became unreasonably excited and started shouting and pointing.
The grass snake might be around here. Apart from that, there are a lot more fields.
You probably have to be an enthusiast.
I won't put you through all the history. Except to say that field there has a Viking name. But here we're south of the Danelaw. Interesting.
If I don't tell a lot of history, I'll just say that some of the fields were very, um, field-like.
*glegg is an ancient Nott'm word my mother used. There you go; you can learn about English local culture from this blog as well as the pains I inflict on my children in pursuit of a decent education.
4 comments:
I want to hear "Eat the Dead" is the made up one but suspect it's "Sheep Walk" as that could be a path not a field.
We say "glegg" round these parts too (Lincolnshire) :-D
I may be a total geek, but I find field names totally fascinating! So many are unchanged for centuries and tel so much about the history of a place.
There, I admit it, I am a field enthusiast.
I must be a field enthusiast too, because I love the names of fields, the odder, the better. They sound better in English than they do in Dutch.
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