Ever since university days I've had a keen interest in the history and origins of place names. So, a talk at the Museum in Lancaster sounded very interesting and we popped along on Friday. The talk was given by the Museum's Manager for whom place names are a passion!
Every place-name has a meaning, usually one that dates back more than 1,000 years. North Lancashire is an area for which written records simply do not exist before the Domesday Book of 1086. What is known of the history of the Lancaster district therefore has been pieced together, using archaeology, metal detected finds, place-names, surviving stone sculpture and rare survivals such as St Patrick’s chapel at Heysham.
-caster - Roman fort or town
-ton - Farm or enclosed settlement
-burrow - Fortification
-wick - Specialised centre
-all - Nook of land
-ham - Homestead or sometimes water-meadow
-ford - River crossing
-ing - People of
-ley - Clearing in woodland
-worth - Enclosure
It was great fun unpicking the history of our village: Over Kellet. Kellet is in the Domesday Book at Chellet, using the softer, Old English ‘Ch’ sound rather than the harder Scandinavian ‘K’.
It is a good example of how interchangeable these sounds could be as Kellet is Old Norse in origin. The name is an amalgamation of Kelda ‘spring’ and hlið meaning ‘slope/hillside’ (the ð has a ‘th’ sound as in ‘this’). It is the same name as Kelleth in old Westmorland, situated on the River Lune just to the east of Tebay – here the ‘th’ sound has remained. Hlið is also an Old English word but specialists can usually discern a slight difference in pronunciation to be able to tell which is which.
Kellet therefore means "the slope/hillside of the spring" and there are many such springs around the Kellets, although the relevant one is taken to be a spring just below the church at Over Kellet.