Old Whitchurch Place Names

When you live in a village with over a thousand years of history, and three languages (Welsh, English and Norman French) and probably a bit of Latin too, there must be some scope for an incredibly wide range of local place names

When you then add in the ‘Anglicisation’ and ‘Wenglish’ derivations (not to mention Anglo-Norman influences) we end up with a complete hotchpotch of names

Our village is called/spelled in the earliest written examples as Blancminster and Album Monasterium, both c1266, Witechurch (in the 13th century), Whitchurche in 1376 and Wytchurch in 1385. By 1314 the village was referred as Blackminster (or Blanchminster), and not until John Leland in 1536 as Eglwys Newydd

In various legal and church papers, the local area and farms have an incredible range of names and spellings. Some of the names we know today are hundreds of years old, whilst others are more recent. The Cardiff Records of British History Online are an invaluable resource

Many of the names that we’ve come across have no location, so have been lost in the mist of time. Whilst we can guess some, where do you think the following might be?

1492 Cae-y-Parc (caireparke, 21 acres in the Lordship of Whitchurch)
Gardd-y-Crug (Garthcreke, the hillock garden)
Tir-Berth-y-Lan (land by the hedge of the hill, 3 acres of demesne land)
Tir-Calanmni (the Mayday land), and
Tristype (a parcel of land held with the fulling mill)

1536 Eglwys Newydd

1605 Plwca Halog (ancient place of execution) and
Heol-Rhiw’r-Cyrph (lane at the slope of the corpses)

1700 Velindre and Y Felindre

1708 Rhiwbinau (the slope of the pine trees)
Pant-Mawr (a great hollow)

1712 Pen-Dwyll (Pendowallt, the dark hill)

1731 Rhyd-y-Tywod (the ford of the sand across the River Taff)

1733 Pant-Bach (little hollow, a tenement on the west side of the road to Rhyd-Waedlyd)

1735 Fforest-Isaf (the lower forest), and
Cwm-Nofydd (a tenement in or near Whitchurch)

1760 Dwy Erw’r Ysgubor Ddegwin (the two acres opposite the tithe barn)
Llyn-Fraith (the motely lake on the River Taff)

1791 ancient farm Rowldon

1811 Philog and Ffilog (a brook and a hamlet near Gwaun-tre-Oda)

1828 Hollybush Inn. Probably took its name from a local tenement Llwyncelyn

1840 Pwll-y-Wenol (the pool of the swallows)

By 1841 and the publication of the Tithe Map we begin to discover where some of these places were. The copy of the map below shows the central part of the parish. Many of the farms and fields are shown with names, many in English, but mostly in Welsh (or phonetically Welsh/Wenglish). Many of these we’d recognise even today, but what about:

WhevecKer (six-acre field?)

Peder Erw (four-acre field?)

Cwm-y-Fwyalchen (dale of the blackbird) and

Nant Gwaedlyd (bloody brook)

Some names are more prosaic, Pumer Heol y Gelli (five-acre field on the track to Gelli Farm?). or family names, Cae Mamgy (Gran’s field). What or who was ‘Croft y Withers’ or ‘Cae Rhyd yr Evel’?

Where was Ynys-y-Ysgallen-Frith (the marsh island of the milkthistle)?

And perhaps the oldest of all local placenames, Treoda, the abode of Oda or Odyn. Described as an ancient messuage in the village of Whitchurch, immediately north of the remains of Whitchurch Castle (or was it just north of Whitchurch Common. Who knows?)

The joy of discovering all of this just adds to the pleasure and enduring mystery of living in our wonderful village. Do you have any names that you can add to the list, or perhaps you can translate some of the names? We’d love to hear

We’re planning to invite a specialist to the library later in the year, to give us a talk about the old names and the lost places. Look out for the posters, it should be a hoot!

 

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