O is for…

I’m handing over to my regular guest blogger today for O. here goes. Enjoy it…

 

O!

 

The title might seem a bit strange since all the other letters so far have referred at least to a word or phrase.

Some of you might remember a post from 2.1.13 called Toponymy where I told you about the furthest points north, south, east & west in mainland Britain. The info came largely from a really interesting present I was given at Christmas – A Dictionary of British Place Names (A.D. Mills). For this week I’ve decided to return to it and have a look at some of the entries under the letter “O”.

First entry in the “O” section is Oadby (appears as Oldebi in the Domesday Book of 1086). The “-by” ending means village or farmstead and the first part is the English version of the Scandinavian name Authi.

Another one is not exactly a place but it gets an entry because of its geographical and historical significance – Offa’s Dyke. It was a rampart forming the boundary separating England & Wales. As you may know Offa was the ancient king of an area called Mercia during the latter half of the 8^th century AD. He was quite an aggressive king conquering large areas of central England and finally Wales. He built the 150 mile long Dyke to stop the Welsh sending raiding parties into English (=’his’) territory. Mercia was a large kingdom occupying the Midlands area of England: its southern border was with the West Saxons (just east of Bristol area) and East Saxons (a much smaller kingdom north of the Thames and south of the area inhabited by the East Anglian peoples). Mercia’s northern boundary appears to have been at least as far as a horizontal line through Liverpool but may have extended much further up before meeting the southern boundary of the kingdom of Northumbria (today the NE of England).

There is a 177 mile footpath you can walk if you fancy it that follows the line of the original dyke. Lonely Planet have nominated the dyke as one of the must see sites for 2013. It has also been listed in the top ten great wall walks “in the world”. (The rest can be seen here: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/themes/best-in-travel-2013/the-worlds-greatest-wall-walks/ )

Those of you who know your history will remember that the area of North Wales is very probably where King Arthur’s ancient kingdom (5^th/6^th century) of Avalon was located. The locations of many of the stories about Arthur can be traced to places in the North Wales area. One of the books I’m reading at the moment is called The Keys To Avalon (Steve Blake, Scott Lloyd) and it does a fantastic job of debunking many of the claims about King Arthur (father Uthyr Pendragon, mother Eigyr) being related to areas in the south of England around Glastonbury and even as far north as Scotland. They do it simply by returning to the original Welsh source documents used by the early writers and showing how misinterpretations of some words have caused misleading info to bed itself into major historical works. It also shows how political manoeuvring in some cases and straightforward commercialism in others contributed to some areas or places being claimed as the “real” locations of parts of the Arthurian story. It’s a good read but you’ll need perseverance to keep going through some of the necessary but difficult sections of Welsh etymology.

I was surprised to read the entry just a bit further on – that of Ogbourne Maizey. It had an entry in the Domesday Book as Ocheburn (stream of a man called Occa) and later as Ocheburn Meysey. This latter name comes from the family name de Meysey. It is first mentioned in records just after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and has a variety of spellings: Meysey, Meysy, Maisie, Maysey & lastly Maisey. It is first recorded in Gloucestershire having been given Lordships of the manors of Hampton Meysey & Marston Meysey by the Conqueror himself. Tradition says that the de Meysey family came over with William the Conqueror. It appears to have come from Brittainy (or possibly Normandy). The family does have a crest & coat of arms so it seems LLM may have some very important ancestors. However treat this information carefully as it could be seen that your family displaced existing lords of the area of their homes and lands simply because of its connections to the conquering nation which gave grants of land to its own people. I’m wondering at this point, as LLM has just done a volunteer stint at a massive country house estate (Ham House), whether she is actually subconsciously returning to her thousand-year old ancestral roots. Something in her genes might be saying: “I belong here!” Hmmm… I wonder how long before we will have to address her as “Milady”?

Next is Old Wives Lees; this has to be one of the most unusual village names. Originally called Oldwoods Lees no-one seems to know how it became corrupted into its present form. The highest point in the village is called ‘The Mount’ and this area was used in the film Last Orders (2000) starring Michael Caine & Bob Hoskins. The Pilgrims’ Way – a 132 mile footpath from Winchester (Hampshire) to Canterbury (Kent) – passes close by and was used by those going to the Canterbury shrine of Thomas à Beckett (Archbishop of Canterbury 1162-1170 who was murdered by supporters of Henry II).

Oswestry (Shropshire) means ‘Tree of a man named Oswald’ and I suppose you can see how easily, over many years, you get from Oswald’s Tree to Oswestry. There is a possible connection to St Oswald who was king of Northumbria in about the 7^th century although it is clearly in Mercian held territory (see Offa’s Dyke para above).

Odd as it may seem there are 3 places in England called simply Over: one in Cambridgeshire, one in Cheshire, one on Gloucestershire.

Next a couple from across the Irish Sea: Owenavorragh (in county Wexford) meaning “river liable to flood” and Owendalulleegh (in Galway) meaning “river of two milch cows”. At first sight you might be tempted to think they have Welsh connections because the start of both is “Owen” but the etymology splits the names after the first two letters. “Ow” meaning river.

Final entry in the “O” section is Ozleworth meaning ‘Enclosure of a man called Osla’ or surprisingly ‘enclosure frequented by blackbirds’.

And there you have it a brief survey of some interesting places beginning with “O”.

Into the dragon’s lair

The other day, I mentioned that I was going on a trip to the local drunk’s flat because a friend had asked me to help him put a framed picture on the wall (my friend owns a gallery and does framing etc). Well, this is the story of that day.

You know how, when you have someone coming over to do something, like you know the gas man is coming to read the meter, you clear a space for him. Say it’s tucked in the far corner of the basement or somewhere awkward, you move some stuff out of the way so it’s easier to get to. Well, Mr Red Wine had evidently cocked a snook at that type of thinking and done absolutely nothing to make our visit easier. In fact, it looked like he’d thrown everything he owned onto the floor and bed and sofa, just before we arrived.

Confusingly, the front door didn’t open properly. It got a little way open and stopped. I now realise it was because he had the sofa right behind it. It was quite wierd because he had a space either side of the sofa that he could have moved it into, so the door would open properly. But he’d pulled it directly into the line of the door.

As we carried the frame into the flat, I had to open the kitchen door and go a little way into the kitchen, to allow us to manoeuvre the frame inside.

It was awful. Awful. Months old dishes were stacked in the sink and everything was slightly tinged with dried-on reddish grease and dust.

As we passed the sofa to get the picture inside, I noticed the one shiny grease-covered spot where he obviously sat, the rest of it was covered in mess. In front of the sofa was a long coffee table, every inch covered in mess and cigarette stubs.

We had to hang the picture on the wall behind the bed and, as he’d moved none of his mess to allow us to get near the wall, we realised we’d have to stand on his bed. We asked Mr Red Wine if he had something we could put on the bed to stand on, to save us standing all over his pillows etc. He got us his dressing gown and kind of threw it on the bed. To be honest, the dressing gown looked it had been used as a doormat so not the best thing to put on a bed but we didn’t question it. We just said thanks and got on.

It was so hot in his flat and I had foolishly worn a scarf which I then couldn’t even consider taking off because there was nowhere clean to put it down.

So onto the bed we go, which was a bit dirty and, wierdly, had a huge pink fish-shaped fairground cuddly toy on it. We were trying to hang the picture but it won’t catch on the hooks so my friend asked me to take the whole weight of it, so I dropped onto my knees and held the frame up.

At this point in my visit, I thought, where did it all go wrong? I was brought up well, I went to a good school, I’ve got degrees, I have a nice job and wonderful friends. How did this happen? How did I end up on my knees on the local drunk’s bed in his flat? Something has gone terribly wrong here.

It was at this point I also thanked myself for changing out of my open Crocs into a pair of closed laced shoes.

Once we had managed to hook it into place, we scarpered quickly, reeling from the experience, and sighed with relief as we went back to our normal greaseless, bedbugless lives.

And that is the story of my visit to Mr Red Wine’s house.