by Nick Corcos

1. Tithe Maps and Schedules
The tithe maps of England and Wales, and their accompanying awards or schedules, are by far and away the most important starting point in the search for potentially archaeologically indicative field names. Only a basic outline can be given here, and readers are strongly advised to follow up the references for greater detail about their historical background.

The tithe survey was carried out following the passing of the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, which was designed to streamline and rationalise the system of financial support for parish priests, which by that date had become mired in widespread confusion, dispute and evasion. The act was designed formally to codify the practice (already adopted in many places) of paying tithes in cash (known as the ‘commutation' of tithes), rather than in animals or agricultural produce, and was based on the amount of land which people owned. For the system to be effective, maps had to be produced, together with lists of landowners and how much land they held (these are the tithe awards). The majority of tithe surveys were carried out between 1836 and about 1842, and the process was effectively complete by about 1850, although where long-running and complex disputes occurred, a small handful dragged on into the next decade. J B Harley notes that the surveys "extended to some 11,800 parishes or townships in England and Wales, covering roughly 79% of the area" (xv). Geographical coverage is by no means consistent, and Harley also points out that tithe records are less likely to occur where all or most of a parish was subject to enclosure by Act of Parliament (see further below), because the opportunity would often have been taken at that time to commute tithes as part of the overall enclosure process. The two mapping processes were, then, to some extent complementary: "at the two extremes, Northamptonshire with about half of its area covered by enclosure acts had roughly a quarter of its area covered by the tithe survey; but Devon and Kent, with virtually no Parliamentary enclosure acts, had an almost complete coverage by tithe awards" (xvi). Many tithe records were based on new surveys, usually carried out by local surveyors, although sometimes earlier maps were simply adapted. The maps usually show ancient parish boundaries, with any detachments lying outside the parish, before the creation of civil parishes, involving changes to and general ‘tidying up' of boundaries, that occurred later on in the 19th century. The maps show buildings, roads, canals, fields, and other bounded plots of land, but little else, and there is no topographical detail - but that was not their purpose. Each plot of land subject to the payment of tithe was numbered, and these numbers are found in the separate tithe schedule, along with other information concerning particular plots. The schedules are arranged in alphabetical order of landowner, not in numerical order of plot. The large pages of the schedule are divided into columns with various headings, one of which gives the name of the field, if known. It should be borne in mind that by the mid 19th century, many old field names had been changed or had otherwise become lost, so the lack of indicative names in a tithe schedule is no guide to their prior existence in a parish. Three copies of each map and schedule were supposed to have been made, and at least one copy of most is now kept at the local county record office, whose contact details can be found through the ARCHON Directory of the Public Record Office (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon). Where for whatever reason the local RO does not have a copy, it is worth checking with the Public Record Office at Kew, in south-west London (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk), which in theory holds the state (or ‘Tithe Redemption') copy of every tithe survey ever made (xvii). In a very few places, field-names and other information have been abstracted, often by volunteer workers, from the tithe surveys at county level, and are available to researchers online as fully searchable databases. This is, for example, the case with the exemplary survey of tithe field names available for Herefordshire, and this is now a crucial resource for archaeologists and landscape historians who know what to look for
(http://www.smr.herefordshire.gov.uk/hfn/db.php). A similar project exists for Essex, encompassing not just the 19th century tithe records, but also a whole variety of other historical records which can serve as sources for place- and field-names (http://www.essex.ac.uk/history/esah/essexplacenames).

2. Enclosure Maps and Awards

Enclosure records come generally from a generation or two before the tithe surveys, in the late 18th and into the early 19th centuries, although so-called ‘General Enclosure Acts', in 1836 and 1845, were not specific to any particular locality, and enabled enclosure under parliamentary principles to be carried out but generally without the need for any formal record. The process of enclosing land, for whatever reasons, had always gone on, and the use of Acts of Parliament as a formal instrument to facilitate it began in the 17th century, although did not really become widespread until after the early 18th century (xviii). In the midlands, parliamentary acts could be, and were used to enclose entire parishes that still, in the 18th century, operated full open-field arable farming. Outside that region however, and especially east and west of it, the parliamentary enclosure process was far less common, mainly because in those areas, enclosure had already been proceeding apace, through other mechanisms, since at least the medieval period. Indeed, it needs to be clearly understood that even during the era of Parliamentary enclosure, these other, more informal types of less extensive, ‘piecemeal' enclosure, often by private and unrecorded agreement between small groups of farmers, continued vigorously and unabated, side by side with the Parliamentary process. Arable land operated on the open-field system was less common outside the midland shires, and tended to be enclosed early, so that by the 18th century, very little of it remained to be enclosed by parliamentary act in these areas. Outside the so-called ‘Midland Belt', where parliamentary enclosure acts were deployed, they were far more likely to involve areas of ‘waste', or non-arable land such as rough grazing, open common, or the draining and reclamation of wetlands and marshes. In Somerset for example, while Parliamentary enclosure was used in just this way on Mendip, Exmoor and the Somerset Levels, by contrast open-field arable accounted for only a minute proportion of the total land area dealt with by this means (xix). Unlike tithe maps, enclosure records can encompass the lands of more than one parish, and indeed sometimes several parishes, although this tendency is seen far more in those enclosures affecting non-arable land. It is also the case that, in terms of recovering field names, enclosures dealing with former arable land will be far more fruitful, because many of the individual cropping units within an open-field system, the ‘furlongs', will already have names, which will be recorded in the enclosure records and may then be traceable in later maps and other sources. By contrast, large, open areas of ‘waste' tended, by definition, not to have the same kind of detailed and intimate ‘toponymic geography' as open-field arable, and this is often reflected in the names of the new enclosures from this type of land, which can be, frankly, boringly descriptive: Five Acres, Seven Acres, Moor Ground etc etc.

By no means all Parliamentary enclosure acts gave rise to the production of awards, or indeed, still less so to maps, although this is a problem that diminishes through time (xx). Again, generally unlike tithe records, enclosure maps and awards may only cover parts of a parish. However, like the later source, and where both survive and/or were drawn up in the first place, they also usually consist of two parts: a map, and an award, with numbered references in the plots tying one to the other. There are a multitude of caveats that the reader needs to be aware of when using these records, which cannot be dwelt on here, but on which the secondary sources already cited will offer much helpful guidance. These references will also advise on the most likely location of surviving enclosure records, although it should be said that, as with the tithe sources, much time will be saved by an initial enquiry directed to the county record office or other local authority archive service, ideally after checking in Kain et al 2004 (see n.18).

3. Private Estate Maps

Private landowners in England were commissioning maps from the growing surveying profession in the 16th century, although they could not be described as in any sense common before the 17th. Because they were not subject to any formal (ie state-imposed) legal or methodological framework, and because different landowners had maps made for wholly different reasons, they can vary enormously in nature (xxi). This variety throws up another problem related to these records: because, by definition, they were privately-funded surveys related to private landholding, far more so than either tithe or enclosure sources, these records are as likely to be found outside the ‘normal' orbit of local authority record offices as within it. Many still remain in private hands, and it is certain that a proportion yet lie undiscovered, buried among the historical muniments retained by solicitors. Landholding is crucial here, and it may sometimes be possible to trace estate maps by following the ‘ownership trail' of a particular place backwards through time. Where old landed families still survive, and retain estates, historical records including maps and other surveys containing field names, are often held by their estate offices. The Earldom of Shaftsbury, for example, based at Wimborne in Dorset, still holds splendid 17th century maps for two of its former Somerset manors. Historically, some of the larger estates could be scattered throughout the country, but the record repository for the entire landholding would be wherever the estate centre was, possibly many miles away from the more far-flung holdings. If these records are no longer required by the estate, or if it has become defunct, they may well have found their way into the local authority record office closest to the former head manor. In addition, and again precisely because of their private nature, an estate map will generally only show landholdings belonging to the person who commissioned it in the first place, unlike the tithe maps which were organised on a systematic, parish by parish basis. It may well be that entire parishes are depicted, but this depends entirely on how the landowner's holdings are distributed. Many landlords had estates that were scattered in bits and pieces across large swathes of territory, so that a particular map may only give very partial and sporadic coverage of any given parish. In terms of format, earlier maps tended by and large to have information on field size, name and state of cultivation actually written on the map itself. However, as time progressed, a rather more ‘standard' arrangement emerged with plots just being numbered, the numbers referring to information about the plots, including field names, which was written in a separate ‘field book', rather like the later tithe maps. Unfortunately, in many cases, while the map may survive, the corresponding reference book has become separated from it and lost, or vice versa.

As before, the starting point in the search for local estate maps should always be the relevant local authority record office, but place-name searches can also be carried out through the online catalogues of both the Public Record Office:
(http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/default.asp?j=1),

and the British Library:
(http://catalogue.bl.uk/F/?func=file&file_name=login-bl-list).

An extremely useful source is the online catalogue of the Access to Archives service, which from one location will search the holdings of many record offices up and down the country (http://www.a2a.org.uk).

4. Non-Cartographic Sources

Both before and after the advent of maps, landowners of all kinds recorded their holdings in written surveys, ‘extents' or ‘terriers' (from the Latin word terra, ‘land'), the best of which amounted almost to word-pictures of estates. As well as containing much valuable topographical information, these records are also minutely concerned with the labour services and other kinds of non-cash obligations (of which there could be a very wide range) owed by tenants to their manorial lords. In the medieval period, ecclesiastical houses were assiduous makers of such surveys, and field-name researchers looking at areas of former monastic or cathedral lands very often have a head start. Numerous documents of this kind survive from the great ecclesiastical houses, but they are widely scattered and can be found just about anywhere; although their current location can depend to some extent on the history of the estates, and their transfer to lay hands, following the mid 16th-century monastic Dissolution. Much of the massive Glastonbury archive, for example, found its way into the hands of the Thynne family at Longleat, where it remains, and where it can be consulted - for a fee, of course. The British Library, the Public Record Office, some local record offices, and Oxford and Cambridge colleges and libraries, all contain collections of medieval and later surveys. The archaeologist intending to use such sources must bear in mind that in tackling medieval documents, s/he will need to acquire at least a basic, working ability not only in Latin, but also in palaeography. There is no way around this, but these sources are of crucial importance because they will often give the earliest surviving form of a field name (see above, the case of Oldbury). It is not possible to give a detailed exposition of these sources here, and for the individual researcher it will be a matter of finding out if his or her place was ever a monastic possession, and then tracking down any surviving surveys. A few such sources are in print in modern editions (xxii), but most are either unpublished, or have only been published partially in early and unsatisfactory editions, which very often omit the topographical detail - precisely the material making them of interest to the archaeologist in the first place. For example, key surveys of the Glastonbury estates now in the British Library, from the early 14th and early 16th century and choc full of field-name detail, come into this category (xxiii).

It was not only monastic landlords that made surveys in the medieval period, however. The crown occasionally came into the possession of estates following the death of a major landholder who died either without any heir, or whose heir was a minor. In these cases, the estates would be surveyed, again for valuation purposes, and these so-called inquisitions post-mortem often contain a great deal of topographical detail. Because from the outset they were state records, they again are kept at the PRO at Kew. Many have been semi-published by the PRO in so-called ‘calendars', but these sometimes do not contain the details of the actual land survey that would be of interest to an archaeologist looking for field names, and there would be no choice but to go back to the original. The calendars are extremely useful, however, in that they are fully indexed by place-name, so that it is at least reasonably easy to find out whether there are any IPMs surviving for a given place (xxiv).

5. Selected Examples of Field-Names Indicative of Settlement and Occupation

We continue to lack a large corpus of toponyms occurring as field-names, which have been proven beyond all doubt to have a persistent, direct, and cumulative relationship with archaeological remains, although as John Field demonstrates, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence for such a relationship across a really very wide variety of name forms. The ones which follow, however, are among the strongest candidates in this respect, and although few in number, they hold a completely disproportionate importance for the archaeologist interested in locating former occupation and activity sites. The numerous other kinds of archaeological sites which may also reveal themselves through indicative field names are not dealt with here (xxv).

Blacklands
Although there is no firm evidence, it seems most reasonable to attribute the origin of this name to the accumulation, over a very long period, of dark, highly organic material arising from the disposal of household rubbish, and general farmyard waste, close to the point of occupation. This is a highly indicative name with a particular relationship to Roman sites (xxvi).

Bury
From Old English byrig, meaning a fortified or high status place, with an implicit sense of settlement and occupation. This word is well-known in major place-names, and its archaeological implications are well attested, to the extent that it should be ‘believed' even in the apparent absence of obvious archaeological evidence. For example, an early 10th century spelling shows quite clearly that the name Whittlebury, in Northamptonshire, contains byrig, but the existence of a major Iron Age hillfort there, with the church sitting in the middle of it, was completely unsuspected and only proven archaeologically very recently, as the result of work carried out in the course of a wide-ranging landscape research project (xxvii). We have already noted an example of byrig in a field-name, and in a particularly indicative form: Oldbury (above). Examples of minor names containing this word, and which are not obviously attached to some major man-made feature such as an Iron Age hillfort, are of special interest (xxviii).

Chessels, Chestles, Chassalls, Chessalls, Chestells
Or any obvious variation thereof. This name is thought ultimately to originate in an Old English word, ceastel, ‘a heap of stones', but at some point seems to have acquired a highly specific secondary meaning of ‘Roman stone building'. Any name like this is potentially highly indicative archaeologically and should be investigated, but as John Field notes, there is a caveat, because modern names of this form could also derive from ceosol, ‘gravel' (it is, for example, this word which occurs in Chesil Beach). Whenever possible, therefore, early spellings should be traced to try to confirm which of the two possible derivations is likely (xxix). It should again be stressed, though, that even if this is not possible, the name is important enough that even relatively modern occurrences (18th/19th centuries for example) warrant archaeological investigation (but this does not necessarily mean excavation!).

Chester
In origin, this word is related to ceastel, deriving as it does from a common Old English word, ceaster. Where this word has been used for forming major place-names, it has a highly specific meaning: a former Roman settlement or town fortified with stone walls. It is no coincidence that all the English towns, and indeed smaller places, with names ending in -chester, are known Roman centres. Its archaeological significance in field names is also clear, and by definition the reference in such cases will almost certainly be to former Roman sites with at least some stone-built structures, although obviously considerably lower down the settlement scale than towns. Like both Blacklands and Chessels et al, this name is important enough to justify immediate investigation even if only recent spellings are to hand (xxx).

Croft
From an Old English word croft, to which Ekwall attributes a meaning "a piece of enclosed land used for tillage or pasture, a small piece of arable land adjacent to a house" (xxxi).

Flower, Flor, Flour
Or any obvious variant thereof. This is from an Old English word flawr, from which modern English ‘floor' is directly descended, and it means precisely that. Although the number of toponyms known to contain this word is in fact vanishingly small, nonetheless it is clear that it was used in a highly specific sense, as a reference to a paved or tesselated surface; the inescapable inference must be that it is indicative of potentially high-status Roman stone buildings (xxxii).

Huish
From an Anglo-Saxon word hiwisc, meaning ‘a hide' (of land). There is a well-established popular mythology about what a hide actually was, but its original meaning appears to have been ‘the amount of land needed to support a single family'. It was probably, therefore, always highly variable, being smaller in areas with access to fertile, high quality land and a good range of other resources, and larger in, for example, agriculturally poorer, upland districts (xxxiii). It occurs in both major names and field-names, and is important because, as Michael Costen has shown, huishes can still be accurately defined in the modern landscape as identifiable units with specific boundaries (see note 37), which by definition would have included an occupation site. Archaeologically they therefore have the potential to be highly indicative.

Stead
From Old English stede, a very common word in major place-names to which Ekwall attributes a primary meaning of ‘place, site of a building', while at the same time stressing a wide variety of other possible interpretations, depending on the particular context (xxxiv). An occurrence as a field-name should certainly be investigated archaeologically, the more so if an early (ie medieval) spelling is available.

Wick
There have been few place-name forming words over which so much scholarly ink has been spilled as this one. Ultimately wick is thought to originate in the Latin word vicus, ‘a small settlement with connotations of dependency on another, probably larger place', and then to have been borrowed into Old English (a so-called ‘loan word', in the same manner as castrum - see above, Introduction, and note 1) (xxxv). It occurs in both major names and field names, but in the latter case there is increasing evidence of a specific, direct relationship with former sites of Roman occupation. A good example is supplied by the Shapwick Project, in the form of a field called Sladwick for which spellings from the early 14th century onwards were available. There was no other indication whatsoever (eg from aerial photographs and fieldwalking) that the field might otherwise be significant, but purely on the basis of the fieldname, it was targeted for both geophysics and soil magnetic susceptibility testing. Following positive results from both analyses, excavation followed, and a substantial stone building of Roman date was revealed (xxxvi). This striking discovery makes the point, therefore, that the archaeologist who can show an early (ie medieval) occurrence of this word as part of a field-name needs to investigate thoroughly, and indeed it is archaeologically indicative enough to warrant following up even where only ‘modern' (roughly 18th century onwards) spellings are available.

Worth, worthy
In place-names this is generally from the Old English word worþig, and although there are closely-related regional variants, it seems to be especially common in the south-west of England. The general meaning appears to be ‘an enclosed farmstead', with a very definite connotation of actual occupation. In field-names it is potentially highly indicative for the archaeologist looking for dispersed Anglo-Saxon rural settlement, especially prior to village-formation, and has, along with huish (see above), been the subject of a major study in Somerset by Michael Costen (xxxvii).

Acknowledgement

I am very grateful to Dr Michael Costen for reading and commenting upon a draft of this article. Any errors of fact or judgement which may remain are entirely the responsibility of the author.

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