Places
Place names
Information from "English Place Names" 1961 by Kenneth Cameron: Other information from "History of the Colne Valley" by D F E Sykes
OE = Old English; OD = Old Danish; ON = Old Norse
- badger = pedlar, often of food
- balmforth = foaming or rapid stream
- bank = bank or ridge (OD)
- bent = a grassy or reddy area
- blake = pale in colour
- booth = temporary shelter (OD)
- carr, or car = land recovered by draining a boggy area (ON)
- clough = a valley with steep sides, forming the bed of a stream (OE)
- Colne = D F E Sykes equates 'Colne' to the Celtic 'Glyn', meaning a narrow valley
- delph = a dug pit or trench
- den, or dene = valley, usually wooded (OE)
- Eastergate = corruption of Esther. Esther Schofield owned the nearby pub of, the Packhorse Inn
- edge = edge or ridge
- firth = wood (OE)
- fold = enclosed area for animals
- gate = street or way (ON)
- Golcar = Sykes conjectures that this is a Celtic word for Beacon fire. He also suggests it means the rock of Saint Guthlac (a missionary from the mother church at Dewsbury). This personal name derivation is preferred by Cameron.
- greave - grave, or pit
- haigh, haugh = hill, usually steep (in OE also a narrow secluded valley)
- hey, hay = enclosure (OE)
- holme = a piece of flat, low-lying ground near a river, liable to flood (ON)
- holt = wood (OE)
- ings = Viking word for a marsh or meadow (inga)
- intake = land taken in to use from the wilderness
- kirk = church
- lea, or lee, or ley, or lay = pasture, or untilled land, or meadow (OE)
- lin = flax (ON)
- lockwood = enclosed woodland
- lund = grove of trees
- Marsden = Marchdene, boundary valley
- moss = moor
- owler = alder tree (OE)
- royd = Clearing, or field (OE)
- scale = summer dwelling
- Scapegoat Hill = corruption of Slip-cote, which was a form of cream cheese
- scar = rocky outcrop or cliff
- Slaith = sloe, blackthorn
- syke = a small stream, often dry in summer
- thorp = daughter settlement, or farm (OD)
- throstle = thrush
- thwaite = forest clearing, or meadow in a low situation (ON)
- Wilherlee = wild boar lea
- worth = enclosure (OE)