Of Boroughs and Barrows: locating the lost burial mounds of Seale, part two.

Evidence of Prehistoric Activity in the Seale Area

That people were living in and crossing over this area in prehistory can no longer be in doubt, the various scatters of worked flint from at least the Neolithic period is evidence of this, along with crop marks and other finds, including pot sherds, axe and spear heads.[1]  This discussion is focussed more on how place names and landscape features might give a clue to the building of barrow mounds in the ancient past, and in some cases how these acted as territorial boundary markers that have lasted into modern times.

 

Figure 1.  Microlith (worked flint scraper or knife) found by the author on a field walk in Overseal, May 2020. Author's photograph.

Seal Brook Burnt Mound.

That people in the Bronze Age and earlier pushed along the rivers and their tributaries is well attested and there are a number of pieces of evidence for this locally.  Perhaps the most ancient is the burnt mound by the Seal Brook,[2] although without carbon dating it is not possible to accurately ascertain its age.  Burnt mounds are something of an enigma in that their purpose is largely conjectural, with the most likely purpose on current understanding being a steam lodge.  In 2005 Derbyshire Archaeological Society (DAS) excavated the mound near the Seal Brook, which ‘was found to be somewhat typical at around twelve to fifteen metres in diameter, with the material consisting of much charcoal and heat affected stones’.[3]  Although a very wide date band is possible, those across Britain and Ireland that have been radiocarbon tested for age fall mostly into a band between the  Neolithic and Bronze Ages, or 7,000 to 3,000 years ago, in line with the dates for the Catholme Ceremonial Complex.  The use of steam lodges in the ancient past is well known, with very many burnt mounds across the country, but their specific use is not entirely certain.  It seems possible, probable even, that they were the sacred space where rituals concerned with the spirit world were enacted.  They are thought to have represented ‘safe’ places associated with cleansing and healing.[4] Whatever their use in prehistory, they are markers used by archaeologists for identifying nearby settlements.  They are almost always found next to a watercourse and are ‘considered indicators of the distribution, location and density of otherwise elusive contemporary settlements’.[5]  Such settlements would be expected to be found nearby but on slightly higher and drier ground than the burnt mound itself.  ‘Stream-walking’ might provide the opportunity of locating further burnt mounds in the area, although some specialist knowledge of what to look for is required.

 

Birchington House Burial Mound (formerly Seal House).

Very near to the Seal Brook burnt mound is the probable site of a former burial mound. The Derbyshire Heritage Environment Record (HER) contains a record for this potential burial mound near to the burnt mound site, again adjacent to the Seal Brook.  Monument record MDR7146 is described in the HER as ‘Potential cropmark barrow of Bronze Age date, seen as a subcircular enclosure, defined by ditch, diameter 8m. Centred at SK 2610 1298. Mapped using good quality aerial photographs’.[6]  If it was a burial mound, like any others in the local area it is entirely gone, eroded by time and ploughed out over the centuries, remaining only as a crop mark visible in aerial photographs and not apparent either on the ground or on the LiDAR map.  The association between this mound and the burnt mound must be seen as significant and is a strong indicator of a nearby settlement.  The opportunity for field walking on the higher ground near to Sandy Lane and the junction with Clifton Road may prove fruitful in locating any former potential settlement.

 

Cadborough Hill.

Between Overseal and Netherseal lies Cadborough Hill, at one time considered “An Ancient British station, probably in connexion with that of Seckington […] on the south side of the hill is a valley, called Dead-Dane Bottom; and in an adjoining field is a tumulus, where human bones have been turned up by the plough”.[7]  The assumption that the burial mound was related to a battle between Saxon and Dane seems to have been made in the early nineteenth century, which, presumably, is why White associates Cadborough with Seckington.  The name Dead-Dane Bottom does not occur in the written records prior to this period and it may be that the ploughing up of the tumulus, or barrow, and the discovery of human bones, led antiquarians or enthusiastic locals to invent the name Dead-Dane Bottom and imagine the battle that took place on or below the hill itself, for which, again, there is no other source.  The hill name Cadborough may come from a personal name Cada, with the borough place name attached to the end.  The name Cada is common as a place name across England and may have a special connection with hilltops (Cadbury Castle in Somerset is a prime example, along Cadbury Castle in Devon and with Cadborough Hill and Cadley Hill locally) and is in fact so frequent as to lead to the suggestion that Cada may have been a mythical or folkloric figure now lost to us.[8]  The confluence of the Kesbrook and Stockbook is at the foot of the hill.

 

Figure 2.  The Seale Bronze Age Axe Head discovered in September 2013.

Events beginning in 2010 resulted in a reconsideration of Cadborough Hill and archaeological and historical scrutiny there.  During the course of that year, the National Forest Company (NFC) purchased part of the hill and announced plans to overplant their part of the top of the hill in a picturesque style, breaking up the regularly shaped wooded covert on the hilltop, which had been planted during the 1930s.  The NFC were alerted to the possibility of the remains of a barrow mound on their newly acquired land.[9]  Finds by the Bloxwich Metal Detecting club in 2012 in a nearby field revealed a small number of Roman coins and brooches, indicating that the area had been under cultivation at least as early as the Romano-British period.  The club returned the following year and discovered, amongst a number of finds dating from Roman to Victorian periods, a Bronze Age socketed axe head.  Axe heads of this type date to around 1000BCE.

 

The axe head find was important as it lent support to the likelihood of the barrow being of Bronze Age date, rather than the already unlikely later Viking communal burial mound. It also led me to a discussion with Barbara Forster of the Derbyshire Archaeological Society and Ticknall Archaeological Research Group (TARG). In April 2013 we were conducting a geophysics survey on the top of the NFC owned part of Cadborough Hill, checking that the location of the lost barrow was not under the planned planting area prior to tree planting.  Barbara Foster observed that a -borough place name ending may be a corruption of the Anglian dative word barwe, meaning ‘hill’,[10] and a brief discussion on place name evidence is in the report that she and I submitted to Derbyshire HER in 2013.  My assumption prior to that discussion was that all -borough place name endings were connected to the burh placename meaning of ‘fortified town’ or ‘defended enclosure’ and once the alternative meaning was there, other places in the local landscape began to become comprehensible.  Berrow and Barrow occur regularly as a -barrow (tumulus or burial mound) place name ending.  Rowberrow in Somerset can stand here as an example, and more locally, Barrow on Trent has multiple barrow mounds adjacent to the River Trent.  

 

Figure 3. Swarkestone Lowes from the OS 25" to the mile map 1888.

Importantly, Swarkestone Lowes (see figure 3) is another local name that contains a reference to barrow mounds and there are several at that location (the four marked on the map not all visible any longer, but LiDAR has revealed several more at the site), with finds indicating use since at least the Mesolithic period.  At least one barrow has beaker pottery beneath it.[11]  Old field name spellings from the 1626 Overseal farm survey give Cadborough as Cadboro so it may be that this is a shortening of the -borough place name ending or that the spelling was later ‘corrected’ to -borough.  Barrie Cox’s discussion on place name endings relating to Barrowden are relevant here, ‘the hill with burial mounds’ with the name relating to the OE word beorg.[12]Putting the Cada and barrow names together may give us the meaning of ‘burial mound of Cada’ but whether Cada was a real or mythical character we may never know, and as mentioned above, the name appears across the country and is often associated with high places, which may at least indicate that there was an ancient mythical person called Cada who was connected with or celebrated in some way on hill tops or mounds.  Cadley Hill has the earlier form of Cadlowsiche dating from 1404 with the specific meaning of ‘Cada’s burial mound by the stream’.[13]  Canalised streams run to the West and north of Cadley Hill.  The use of the word ‘lowe’ meaning burial mound is discussed further in the post on Fivelowes.

Bramborough.

Bramborough at Donisthorpe occupies a hilltop position and has been proposed as the site of an Iron Age farmstead.  No known barrow has occupied the site, although if we allow the -barrow name ending the name would translate as ‘the bramble-strewn burial mound’ from OE bremel, meaning bramble.  Again, with no evidence of a ditch and ring fortification for a burgh or borough a barrow name ending is perhaps the most plausible explanation.  The 1835 Ordnance Survey map gives the name as Brambro.[14]  The brook that rises here was once called the Bramborough Brook[15] and was crossed nearby at the ‘Salter’s Ford’, again evidence of salt routes from the west crossing into the central plain.  The brook eventually became known as the Saltersford Brook.  The Via Devana Roman road from Colchester to Chester ran close to the position of the modern farm and some field boundaries at Bramborough Farm maintain the alignment.[16]  See also the 13^th century reference to the “via Ferrata” in Seale, which may be referring to the Roman road.[17]

 

Whitborough

The former site of a post-enclosure period farm on the Woulds, Whitborough has no known burial mound, the suggestion of that possibility here is speculative and entirely through the possibility of the name ending.  The alternative spelling Whitborrow is given in the enclosure award of 1807.[18]   It is located near to the ruins of Norris Hill Hall, near to where Moira, Boothorpe and Blackfordby meet, and above the former site of Whitborough Farm, which stood in the lee of the hill.  An unnamed stream runs at the foot of the hill.  The hill above the farm lent its name to the dwelling and may have meant the ‘white barrow’ or possibly the ‘wight barrow’ although there are no known folklore tales attached to it.  Wights might sat first seem an unlikely option but it is known that prior to the massive exploitation of the Woulds for mineral deposits and widescale opencast mining for coal, clay and ironstone, as well as deep mining, that marsh lights were to be seen on the Woulds.  In popular folklore, these Jack o’ Lanterns or Will o’ the Wisps were believed to be marsh spirits, sent to guide the unwary benighted traveller into the marsh to be sucked into the mud and drowned.  Locally, these marsh spirits were known as Meg, and left their name in field names such as Megg’s Garden in Overseal when the Woulds were enclosed and drained in the eighteenth century.  Similarly, the name Meg o’ the Hill occurs on the outskirts of Appleby Parva,[19] next to Salt Street and not far from Tatborough.  The Woulds were a chancy place after dark and one can only imaging looking out across the Woulds from Overseal or Donisthorpe at the mist rising and seeing the ghostly lights flaring in the dark from time to time.

 

Figure 4.  Megg's Garden from the proposed 'lost' 1755 enclosure map of Overseal, now held in Stafford Record Office.  Megg’s Garden is immediately adjecent to the Woulds and the still marshy area next to the Hooborough Brook, which forms the modern county and parish boundary.  Author's photo.

Tatborough.

This site lies on an important crossing of ancient trackways to the west of Appleby Magna.  These are the north-south route that is now the A.444 from Nuneaton to Burton on Trent, and Salt Street, a known prehistoric trackway and salt route from the salterns of the Droitwich area into the east midlands.[20]  Salt Street is directly south of Seale and connects to an ancient network of overland routes at No Man’s Heath, some of which have been adopted as modern roads, others have become byways or public footpaths.  The name Tatborough is remembered on the OS 1902 map close to the junction of these trackways as Tatborough Spinney.  Its proximity to the ancient Anglo-Saxon moot-place for West Goscote is also significant here, and it may be that the local moot was held on the mound itself.[21]  The place-name element Tat is a corruption of tot, meaning a lookout position and may also be found in the placename Tutbury.  Toot or tot is also sometimes used for a burial mound, so the name may be here applied twice, tot-barrow, perhaps meaning mound-mound, when the old meaning has been forgotten.  Salt Street is significant as the overland route connecting Tatborough to Seale.

 

Billa Barra

Further afield but included here for the same reasons as the mention of Barrow-on-Trent, it demonstrates further support to the proposal for the borough/ barrow place name endings, is Billa-Barra at Bardon.  Billa-Barra is near to Coalville and marked on the 1902 Ordnance Survey map as Billa Barrow,[22] but on earlier OS maps as Bilborough.  The Borough Council’s brief entry for the history of the site states that ‘The name of the hill is thought to be a corruption of the word "barrow," meaning burial ground. This is thought to be linked to stories of a Saxon battle on the adjacent land with the dead buried on the hill. However, any physical evidence would have been destroyed at the on-set of quarrying’.[23]  As with Cadborough, the more likely explanation is of a prehistoric burial mound occupying the prominent site.  An unnamed stream runs to the south of the hill.

 

Drakelowe

Drakelowe is mentioned here for three reasons; its placename meaning, the barrow that once stood there, and the possible correspondence with Whitborough.  There is no known specific prehistoric connection between Seale and Drakelowe other than that they are within a few miles of each other, and the people would have been part of the same broader clan.  That a barrow stood next to the River Trent at Drakelowe in the past is known from the placename.  Drakelowe is Old English for Dragon Hill or Dragon Mound.  In early English world imagery, the dragon is the guardian or watcher, warding a buried treasure or golden hoard and acting as gatekeeper to the land of the dead.[24]  The association of the dragon with gold, or treasure, is an ancient one and the word itself, dragon, has its roots in the Indo-European word *derk, meaning to see clearly.[25]  The village of Drakelowe was abandoned at the end of the 11^th century, the reason given at the time was a haunting by vampires but in all likelihood an attack of plague.  The lords of the manor, the Gresley family, maintained a seat there until the 19^th century.  The site of the deserted village is given in the Derbyshire HER along with the earliest known recorded mention of the name ‘Dracan Llawen’ in the written records, 942CE.[26]In 1300, Geoffrey de Gresley claimed right of gallows there and it is likely that the gallows stood atop the barrow mound itself.  Historic England point out that as barrows were known to have ancient connections, their ‘association with pagan myths and traditions meant that gibbets were sometimes constructed on them and criminals buried in them’.[27]  The connection between a guardian in the barrow and perhaps hauntings from the unquiet dead executed on the gallows and buried in unsanctified ground (perhaps at the crossroads) lends some credence to the possibility that the name meaning of Whitborough is associated with wights or malevolent spirits rather than the colour of the hill.

 

Castle Knob

Castle Knob at Castle Gresley is the site of a mediaeval motte and bailey castle and included here only for its potential reuse of a burial mound.  Motte and bailey castles are known to have reused burial mounds as the basis for the bailey mound, certainly in cases where the location was suitable for the requirements of the mediaeval builder.  As the location requirements for both was often on a prominent hilltop the later builders sometimes took advantage of the mound already there, enhancing its height and size for their own needs.  There is no recorded barrow mound beneath the current castle mound, and it is included here speculatively.  See Derbyshire HER monument record MDR2549 for further information.[28] Again, a small stream runs at the base of the hill on which the mound sits.  It is mentioned here for it’s possible change of use and as possible evidence of further mounds in the vicinity of the study area.

 

Conclusion

The purpose of barrows went beyond their role as a place of rest for the dead.  It is likely that they also acted as a focal point for the spiritual needs of the community, much as a church might to modern Christians, and it is thought by archaeologists that rituals performed there helped in the structure of life in the community, binding the people together and binding them to the land.[29]  They differed from the earlier Neolithic long barrows in that they were not communal burial sites as such and may have contained only the body of a single individual, although other burials, presumably of family group or clan members, were sometimes added later.  This shift in burial practice and traditional customs may reflect the change of people as the Neolithic folk gave way to the Beaker people of the Bronze Age.  Barrows are located prominently, often on a hilltop, and may also therefore be considered as territorial markers.  They are not only a visual marker, this signposting is also done through the act of placing of the ancestors into the mound (presumably a chieftain, shaman or powerful clan leader, or possibly a ritual sacrifice), thus connecting the clan and the land, both physically and metaphysically.  The dead therefore become guardians of place in more than one reality or plane of existence.  The mound may also be seen as a place of rebirth, resembling a pregnant belly as it does, and by placing the person or persons into the barrow, we might expect them to be reborn, either into this world or the next.  We might also consider that by interment in a barrow they are being returned from whence they came, to the earth.

 

Barrows first began to appear from circa 6,000 years before present and are present in the landscape in a variety of shapes and typologies, although their full function is now lost to us.  Round barrows themselves appear in different types and these can fall into a variety of sizes, from just a few metres across to over 40m in diameter.  It is thought that in the past almost every parish in the country would have contained at least one barrow, with the majority now lost to the plough.[30]  Barrows were used with decreasing frequency into the Roman period and there are a smaller number of Anglo-Saxon barrows recorded, perhaps the most well-known being the Sutton Hoo ship burials in Suffolk.

 

That the parish of Seale contained several barrows or burial mounds is indicated by the records of the ploughed-out barrow on Cadborough Hill, the HER reference to the Birchington House barrow and the documentary evidence of the field names relating to Fivelowes.  The inclusion into this picture of other activities and the wider landscape of the burnt mound sweat lodge and the ceremonial complex where three rivers meet at Catholme indicates that these people were organised and capable of manipulating their surroundings to suit their needs.  When placenames are considered, although seemingly speculative at first glance, the corroborating evidence for considerable human activity in the area in prehistory begins to mount. An image of family groups of the local clan scattered across a farmed landscape appears, and our ancestors lives perhaps become less indistinct than they were.  If it is the case that the -borough place name endings do indicate the presence of Bronze-Age burial mounds, then our landscape held multiple meanings for them, a true palimpsest and an accretion of layers of meaning.  It may also be the case that in setting out their claim to the land, the local clan and family groups also delineated the boundary and boundaries that are still discernible in the old parish boundaries that we see today.

 

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[1] http://www.archiuk.com/cgi-bin/web-archi.pl?PlacenameFromPlacenameFinder=Stone%20Rows&CountyFromPlacenameFinder=Leicestershire&distance=10000&ARCHIFormNGRLetter=SK&ARCHIFormNGR_x=32&ARCHIFormNGR_y=14&info2search4=placename_search#neolithic (Accessed 8^th February 2021).

[2] Monument record MDR14914 - Burnt mound, Seal Brook, Netherseal. See here for detail (Accessed 7^th February 2021).

[3] https://her.derbyshire.gov.uk/Monument/MDR14914 (Accessed 8th February 2021).

[4] https://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art538051-historic-scotland-orkney-sauna-healing-hot-house-cooking-prehistoric (Accessed 29th April 2021).  Having taken part in a modern steam lodge ceremony and ritual, I can attest to their efficacy.

[5] Hodder, M. West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology, Seminar 2: Hodder. Burnt mounds and beyond: the later prehistory of Birmingham and the Black Country. Available here: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Q2sSAD8w_tAJ:https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/caha/wmrrfa/2/MikeHodder.doc+&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari (Accessed 29^th April 2021).

[6] https://her.derbyshire.gov.uk/Monument/MDR7146 (Accessed 8th February 2021).

[7] White, W. History, Gazetteer & Directory of Leicestershire and Rutland. London 1863 p:504.

[8] http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Devon/Cadbury (Accessed 8th February 2021).

[9] Pers Comm.  I emailed Mr Matt Brocklehurst, the then Forest Development Manager for the NFC in the August of 2010 with the preliminary information and we had a string of emails and site meetings on the subject over the course of the next three years.

[10] Gelling, M. Place Names in the Landscape. Dent London ed 1994 p: 127.

[11] https://her.derbyshire.gov.uk/Monument/MDR7303 (Accessed 1st August 2021).

[12] Cox, B. The Place- Names of Leicestershire and Rutland. Nottingham University Library. p: 699 PhD thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham 1971. see here: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33564411.pdf (Accessed 10th February 2021).

[13] Cameron, K. The Place Names of Derbyshire. Part Three. The English Place Name Society, Nottingham 1959 reprinted 1993 p: 635.

[14] https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/maps/sheet/first_edition/sheet63 (Accessed 9th February 2021).  This may be intended as a shortening of Bramborough but as nearby Whitborough is not marked (the farm may not yet have been built) there is no other borough name with which to compare it.

[15] See the 19^th century Donisthorpe tithe map held in Leicester Records Office.

[16] https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/1994/1994%20(68)%20153-194%20Arch%20of%20Leics-Rutland%2093.pdf (Accessed 9^thFebruary 2021).

[17] DRO reference number: D77/1/23/68 or see here: https://calmview.derbyshire.gov.uk/calmview/Overview.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog (Accessed 9^th February 2021).

[18]  Cox, B. The Place- Names of Leicestershire and Rutland. PhD thesis, Nottingham University Library. 1971 p:342

[19] http://www.applebymagna.org.uk/appleby_history/in_focus33_appleby_field_names.html (Accessed 9th February 2021).

[20] For further information on salterns in prehistory see Historic England’s Introduction to Heritage Assets, Pre-Industrial Salterns here: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-preindustrial-salterns/heag225-pre-industrial-salterns/ (Accessed 9^thFebruary 2021).

[21] Cox, B.H. Leicestershire Moot-Sites: The Place-Name Evidence. Booklet reprinted from the Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, Volume XLVII, 1971-2.  The Guildhall, Leicester p: 20

[22] https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/?fbclid=IwAR3lbRDvm4-OJ7qrG3_iD5bkkEmzknNgLQAN1xjDQoeNa44k2nTFHKoyKUI#zoom=17&lat=52.69846&lon=-1.31260&layers=168&b=1 (Accessed 9^thFebruary 2021).

[23] https://www.hinckley-bosworth.gov.uk/info/200073/parks_and_open_spaces/361/billa_barra_hill/3 (Accessed 9th February 2021).

[24] Consider here the story of Beowulf or the dragon Fáfnir in the stories of Sigurð.

[25] Sherlock. R. The Greed of Dragons: An Investigation into the Association of Avarice and Dragons in Anglo0Saxon and Old Norse Narrative Literature. Dissertation for MA Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies, University of Nottingham 2014.

[26] https://her.derbyshire.gov.uk/Monument/MDR2605 (accessed 22nd April 2021).

[27] Historic England. Prehistoric Barrows and Burial Mounds. Introduction to Heritage Assets. Swindon 2018 p: 7.

[28] https://her.derbyshire.gov.uk/Monument/MDR2549 (Accessed 29th April 2021).

[29] https://heritagecalling.com/2015/07/10/a-brief-introduction-to-bronze-age-barrows/ (Accessed 22^nd April 2021).

[30] Historic England have produced a helpful guide here: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-prehistoric-barrows-burial-mounds/heag217-prehistoric-barrows-burial-mounds/ (accessed 22^nd April 2021).

Of Boroughs and Barrows: Locating the lost burial mounds of Seale. Part one- Five Lowes

 The following discussion came about following a review of old local maps and documents held in the Record Office in Matlock, alongside fieldwork on the ground.  Reading the landscape is a satisfying pastime in itself, and thinking about the names our ancestors gave to the fields and topography around them may help to give us an insight into their worldview.  The realisation that there may well be more than one or two burial mounds in our ancient parish came after quite a long period of study but the recognition that there may once have been very many more came after putting map and documentary evidence together in one afternoon following a discussion with the Rev. Will Bates (retired) and my wife, Kay.  That the area had a name, Ffyvelowes, or Five Lowes, made it even more astonishing.

 

The exact location of Fivelowes is now lost to us but with some careful reading of documentary and map evidence we may be able to locate it.  The various 16^th century documents that refer to it have different spellings, but the name is perfectly clear: Five Lowes.  The Gresley Processional Map of circa 1570 indicates an area to the north side of Overseal in a brief reference: ‘Ffyvelowes in leicestershire & in ye lordshippe of ov seale & in the tenure of wm wakelyn’.  Rendered more legibly to the modern eye this becomes ‘Fivelowes in Leicestershire and in the lordship of Overseal and in the tenure of William Wakelin’. 

Figure 1.  Excerpt from the Gresley Processional Map. DRO reference D77/8/102

An undated document held in the DRO is a 19^th century transcript by John Morewood Gresley of the earlier paper held in the family archive, and although undated a little research helps us to resolve that.  The relevant passages are: 

ffyrrst ý saye that the lands & ground in ffylowes & Brydgemore feld were Mr Appulbyes land who had no land in Derbye shyre & sold y^e same to Mr Grriffyn of Dyngley/ & also saye y^t one Thomas Holland of Lynton did occupye the same & payde for y^e same iii^s iiii^d by yere to . . . . . & after hym one Ric Coke did occupye the same w^th his house in Overseale & payde y^e Rent to his Mrs Baylye of Overseale           

 

Rendered in modern English this becomes ‘First they say that the lands and ground in Fivelowes and Bridgemore field were Mr Appleby’s land, who had no land in Derbyshire and sold the same to Mr Griffin of Dingley/ and also say that one Thomas Holland of Linton did occupy the same and paid for the same three shillings and four pence by year to . . . . . [presumably the name was illegible to Gresley or missing from the original] and after him one Richard Coke did occupy the same with his house in Overseal and paid the rent to his Mrs Bailey of Overseal.’

 

The following passage is as follows:

It they saye that there is land in ffylowes y^t belongeth the fferme in Overseale to y^e valewe of iii akers wch John Kelynge nowe occupieth of Overseale & payeth to y^e fferme fo the same viii^d by yere

 

Which is ‘Item: They say that there is land in Fivelowes that belongs to the farm in Overseal to the value of three acres which John Kelling now occupies of Overseal and pays the farm the same eight pence by year’.

Figure 2.  The passages from the 1578 document mentioning Fivelowes.  Original held in DRO.

In a note at the side of the entry Gresley also copied the following: 

Figure 3. Detail showing the comment at the side of the main entry.

‘Mo^re y^t W Wakelyns close lyeth betwixt fylowes and coton pke’. 

This seems to place a close or enclosed field belonging to Wakelin between Fyvelowes in the east and Coton Park (not the mining houses in Linton, the estate and farm near Grangewood) in the west.  As there is no later field name corresponding with Ffyvelowes we must consider the possibility that it was the name of an area rather than a single field, which seems also to be implied by the statement that there is 'land in Fivelowes that belongs to the farm' ie Fivelowes is divided into smaller parcels of land.  

 

The relevance here is not the sixteenth century dispute over the land ownership, but the name meaning and location of Fylowes or Fyvelowes itself, apparently close to the then county boundary between Leicestershire and Derbyshire, Seale parish then belonging in Leicestershire, and the parish boundary with Linton in Derbyshire.  The Gresley Processional Map reference and the documentary evidence dating to circa 1578[1]gives us the name Ffyvelowes (one of its spelling variants).  What the map also gives us is the artist’s interpretation of three of the five mounds (see figure 6).  In the open fields and directly below the word Est (east) and next to the word Ffyvelowes is a depiction of mounds that can only be representations of the lowes or burial mounds that were still visible in the landscape at that time.[2]  By the time of the 1626 survey Booke for the Feilds of Over Seale, the name has been lost, as has Brydgemore Feld (Bridgemoor Field).  It is unclear from the passage as to whether Brydgemore Feld and Ffylowes belonging at one time to Mr Appleby were adjacent to each other or connected in any other way than through him owning the two land parcels. 

 

This leaves us with the knowledge that Fyvelowes existed, were visible in the landscape in 1578 and situated to the north of Overseal close to or forming the boundary with Linton.  It is not possible to state with any certainty how the barrows were arranged, whether as a cluster or as a linear feature, nor in fact whether there were originally more of them.  Based on other sites a cluster is perhaps most likely. These barrows on the northern edge of Overseal, adjacent to the western edge of the Woulds may perhaps have extended over an area corresponding to several modern fields.  That the Seale Wood or Great Wood extended as far as the barrows themselves seems likely and the location of the five barrow mounds on the highest point of the village and in fact the highest point on the western edge of the Woulds must surely be of significance.  This is important, it means that the people who lived in this area at least as early as the Bronze Age were claiming an area that corresponds to approximately the same area as the later greater parish of Seal and the Woulds.  This did not then change until 1800CE when the Woulds were enclosed through an act of parliament, the people separated from the land and the modern parishes created, although themselves based on the manorial system.  Which means that the greater Seale parish boundary was created very early in its history and remained virtually unchanged for perhaps 3,000 years.

 

This seems at first like an extravagant claim but there are precedents for this.[3] Indeed, many Anglo-Saxon settlements across the country may reflect territorial boundaries that are coterminous with Bronze Age ones.  The similarities in the use of watercourses and other topographical features in the landscape - high points and hills for example - also aligns with the examples elsewhere in the country. Our difficulty in Seale is that all of our barrows have either been ploughed out or destroyed by opencast mining and no charters exist from the Anglo-Saxon period for our parish.  In some ways their loss is not surprising, by the time the Tudor map was created, the mounds at Fivelowes would already have been more than 2,500 years old.

 

The work of the DAS in discovering the burnt mound and the Birchington House burial mound has helped enormously.  The territorial markers therefore seem to imply that the Seal Brook in the west, Fivelowes to the north and perhaps as far as the Hooborough Brook in the east marked the territory claimed for agriculture and pastoral, although the area between Fivelowes and the Hooborough Brook was perhaps a debatable land on the edge of the Woulds.  The north-western boundary was the great wood, the remnant of which we now think of as Grangewood, with the conjectural barrows at Bramborough and Whitborough along with the Shellbrook to the east acting as territorial markers for the common grazing and other requirements.  The River Mease provided the southern boundary and the proposed Hooborough barrow along the brook of the same name linking the ford at Acresford to Bramborough and then to Whitborough further east.  Timber requirements were provided by the great wood.  

 

Without further evidence beyond that provided by DAS’s archaeological work and the evidence provided by placenames and laid out here, this claim for some, if not all, of the ancient Seale parish boundary having been laid out in the Bronze Age is a tantalising possibility, likelihood even, but for now remains conjectural.

I am indebted to Sue Brown of Packington for help in understanding the wording of the Tudor map and Gresley's notes.

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[1] See The Unknown Pilgrim https://sealeshistory.blogspot.com/2021/07/john-morewood-gresleys-19th-century.html

[2] Fyfield may stand here for similar place names in England.  See Mills, A.D. The Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. OUP 1991.  The word ‘lowe’ from the Old English hlaw means ‘a burial mound’ and is well attested across the county and England as a whole.  See Field, J. English Field Names; a dictionary. David & Charles, Newton Abbot 1072 p: 130, & Cameron, K. The Place-Names of Derbyshire.  English Place-Name Sociery Volume XXIX, part three. Appletree Hundred, Repton & Gresley Hundred analyses & indexes.  University of Nottingham 1993 p: 734

[3] Spratt, D. A. “Recent British Research on Prehistoric Territorial Boundaries.” Journal of World Prehistory, vol. 5, no. 4, 1991, pp. 439–480. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25800605. Accessed 31 July 2021.

Of Seales and Sallows: the Seale place-name meaning.

 

The Oxford Book of English Place-names gives the meaning of Seal as deriving from the related word shaw meaning trees.  The very helpful Key to English Place Names website from the University of Nottingham is useful but brief in its description of seal meaning “a small copse” and breaks down the elements and their meanings as 

·    nether (Middle English) Down, downward, low.

·    uferra (Old English) Higher.

·    scegel (Anglian) A small wood.[1]

(The references are given as: Watts; Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-names p: 431. A.D. Mills; Dictionary of English Place-Names p: 343 and Cameron; Place-names of Derbyshire p: 645).

The oldest written reference we have for Seale is from Domesday Book, written in 1087 when the villages come under the parish name of Seale.  The settlements of the two Seals were considered as a single village with the hamlet of Overseal thought of as exactly that, a hamlet of the wider village, certainly of the wider parish.  It is hard to know whether the two villages were differentiated by prefixes and called by their later recorded names Uferra-salh and Nether-salh, and whilst likely, we will probably never know that for certain.  Domesday refers to Seale and Alia-Seale, Seale and the ‘other’ Seale, meaning the main village and its outlying northern hamlet.  Other parts of the Seale parish, Boothorpe and Donisthorpe, are included by their separate names.  Gunby must have been occupied as a farmstead as the name is Anglo-Danish, but within the wider Netherseal village and therefore not recorded as a separate entity at Domesday.

We can investigate the name meaning further as the word seal has a still more direct link to the willow tree, or a sub-species of willow, the sallow.  Sallow has the meaning "shrubby willow plant", from the Old English sealh, the Anglian -salh or the Old Norse -selja, all words coming from the proto- Germanic root *saljhon and ultimately from the proto-Indo-European language *sal(i)k all meaning "willow".[2]  The Latin name salix for the genera and the modern name sallow hold the key to understanding the village placename and link back many thousands of years to a language no longer spoken.

Understanding the name derivation for the word Seale is complicated by the fact that the Anglo-Saxon word sele could also mean ‘hall’.[3]  This gives us the old word sheiling, often used for small shepherd’s huts, sheds or similar buildings, and without further documented evidence the derivation of Seale must be considered in the context of its wider surroundings.  This context for us has to be the landscape, and especially the landscape as it would have been in the past, before enclosures allowed modern land drainage and landscape engineering to effectively drain farmland.  All of England was much wetter and marshier in the past, meaning that crop and food production, and farmland drainage and irrigation was managed through the use of ridge and furrow.  Overseal and Netherseal sit between two particularly wet areas, the Mease Valley and the Woulds.  The Mease valley yields especially productive soil and good farmland, across to the Hooborough Brook, beyond which much of the soil becomes a heavy clay and is much more difficult for farming.  The Woulds themselves, on a much higher elevation, provided summer pasture for cattle and other livestock animals, along with other plants that yielded much-needed foods, medicines and building materials.   

Place name dating tells us that the Seale parish was settled in the second wave of Anglian incursions (not Saxon), probably in the later 6th century (after 550CE) and the Anglian word ‘salh’ (pronounced ‘sale’) gives us our village names.  The name is also remembered in the local pronunciation of the word and family name ’Sale’.  Locals still pronounce the village names as ‘Ovversale’ or ‘Owersale’, and ‘Nithersale’, and this is a connection to the same root word.  What this means for us is that the place name ending “seal” demonstrates that the area was (and still is) readily populated by species of willow tree, sallows.  A stroll along the river Mease, or the Hooborough brook, the Kesbrook, Sealbrook, Shellbrook or the other watercourses that drain into the Mease is also a stroll amongst the willows and sallows. (Shellbrook, across the Woulds on the Ashby road is another derivation of seal-brook and is nothing to do with shells).  In Appleby Magna the Sale Gutter is a boundary ditch not named after its proximity to the Seales (it is on the far side of their parish from us) but for its value in creating withies from the crop of willows and sallows.

The use of the word ‘settled ‘is probably confusing here, the area was certainly already settled by the British and earlier peoples; finds of Roman or Romano-British origins indicate that the area was settled and farmed, and the fact that Bronze-Age burial mounds occupied one, and maybe more hilltops, along with the Bronze Age axe head nearby suggest that the parish has been dwelt in and farmed for very much longer.  What the Bronze-Age, Iron-Age and Romano-British peoples called the parish though is unknown.  Settlement by the incoming Anglian invaders may well have been aggressive, although place names such as Walton and Bretby seem to suggest that at least some British people remained.   It seems likely that the incoming Anglian people gradually absorbed the natives into their own culture, supplanting it entirely.

Willows and their sub species - osiers, sallows and so on - were of enormous importance in the past as they have a wide variety of uses- from baskets, fences and houses, to fish traps and medicines.  Withy baskets of every size were important in every house.  The houses themselves were timber framed with withy walls, the wattle, over which was layered a mixture of wet clay/soil/ animal dung and straw or rushes, the daub, giving us the wattle and daub walls.  Withy hurdles were vital in livestock management, the open field system required cattle and sheep to be kept off the crop as there were very few hedgerows in the landscape (they are a feature of the enclosures of the 18th and 19th centuries) and Seale had willows in abundance.  For basket making, withies are cut in the winter, boiled for up to 10 hours to soften the bark and loosen the fibres, stripped of their bark and can then be made into baskets of every conceivable size, shape, and use.  Hurdles do not need to have their bark removed.

The early English are not thought to have differentiated between the pussy willow and the goat willow, properly known as the Great Sallow and the Grey Sallow, both trees being quite similar in appearance, with similar silky catkins.  Charters surviving from the AS period do occasionally use sallows as boundary markers, thane ealde seale ‘the old sallow’ occurs in Winterborne Tomson, Dorset, and tha woche sæle ‘the crooked sallow’ in Pensax, Worcestershire.[4]  If the word ‘seal’ or ‘sale’ for sallows was so common in the past it is not unreasonable to expect to see it in use as a place name across the country.  It turns out that this is the case, although the word is often hidden in plain sight.  Place names referencing sallows abound, stretching right across the country from the Saxon south to the Anglian north and can all be traced to their ‘sallow’ origins.  These include Selworthy, Somerset; Selham, West Sussex; Silton, Dorset; Salford End, Bedfordshire; Salehurst, East Sussex; Selwood, Somerset; Selby, Yorkshire; the city of Salford itself is named from sealhford, the sallows by the ford; there are very many more.

By examining the name meanings closely, we can add detail to the more general place name meanings given by the major authorities, a luxury and convenience they do not have, and we may examine our local place names in much greater context by looking around us at the landscape, informed by our local knowledge of the past.  Every time someone speaks the word Seale they are using a word from language that has its roots in the earliest language spoken in Europe.  That uttered breath carries a very ancient meaning, whether we know it or not.  Overseal, being on relatively high ground on the western edge of the Ashby Woulds, is “above the sallows” and Netherseal, low down in the Mease valley, is “below or amongst the sallows”.  When we speak aloud the names of our villages we are connecting with our ancient past and the world our ancestors saw and named.

Figure 1. A view across the Woulds. © Mark Knight 2020

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[1] http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Derbyshire/Nether%20and%20Overseal Accessed 28^th December 2020

[2] An asterisk at the beginning of the word indicates that it has been etymologically reconstructed.

[3] Hooke, D. Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore, Landscape. Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2010 p:229

[4] Hooke, D. Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore, Landscape. Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2010 p:229