Dec. 31st. By one tenth to General Account Balance in Savings Bank £54 0 4 Cr. £ s. d. 7 19 7 71 16 7 Dr. 1920. Jan. 1st. £ S d. To Balance from last Account s. d. 91 9 0 ... PURCHASE FUND. 1920. .Oct. 18th. By Transfer to Museum Maintenance 2 1 5 ... Dec. 31st. Fund Balance £93 10 5 Jan. 1st. To Balance from last Account Oct. 18th. Interest accrued on 16 War Savings Certificates sold ... Dr. ... RECEIPTS. ... BRADFORD-ON-AVON TITHE BARN. Year ending December 31st, 1920. Balance at Bank, December 31st, 1919 ... 15 60 Caretaker ... EXPENDITURE. Grass cutting Sir C. E. H. Hobhouse, Bart., Wayleave ... C. H. Woodward, Printer and Publisher, Exchange Buildings, Station Road, Devizes. £33 12 9 30 12 6 £33 12 9 THE WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE. MULTORUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATUR ONUS."-Ovid. No. CXXXV. DECEMBER, 1921. VOL. XLI. THE PLACE-NAMES OF WILTSHIRE. By G. B. GRUNDY, D. Litt. The standard work on the place-names of Wiltshire is "The Place-Names of Wiltshire, their Origin and History," by Einar Ekblom (Upsala, 1917). The book will be known to many people in the county; but for the information of those who do not know it, I may mention that it is in English. All that will be attempted in this paper is :-(1) to suggest possible emendations of Ekblom's interpretations; (2) to add various names which he has not included in his work, though old forms of them are known. The emendations will be put in the alphabetical order followed by Ekblom; the additions will be classified under parishes named in alphabetical order. EMENDATIONS. Aldbourne (N.E. of Marlborough), E. rejects "eald,” “old,” as the first element of this name, because he thinks it to be an unlikely attribute to apply to a brook. Yet it is applied to a "lacu," "slow stream," in the charters, and to various other apparently unlikely objects, such as "ig," island. I fancy Aldbourne is, after all, "the Old Bourne." On this Dr. Henry Bradley says:-"No doubt there were streams called 'Old Burn.' But there is evidence of a pre-English stream named Alde; and in compounds with 'burn' one may choose either interpretation." Alton Priors (N.W. of Pewsey). The charter B. 390, which E. quotes, is not a charter of Alton, Hants, but of this very place. Atworth (N.W. of Melksham). E. quotes K. 706 as dating from A.D. 1001. The forms of words in the survey show that it, at any rate, is much later in date than that. The form of the name in that charter is Attenwrth. There is an Attendene in another Wilts charter (B. 1216, K. 543), spelt Aettan Dene in yet another charter (B. 782). In a late charter, the ME, "At ten Wrthe," descending from an A.S. locative æt thære Wyrthe," "at the Farm," might possibly produce the modern VOL. XLI.-NO, CXXXIV. 2 A name. I fancy that the name Attendene, despite the variant Aettan Dene, had the same origin. On this point, however, Dr. Bradley has sent me an important note:-" on the ground of accent I disbelieve in the common notion the names in At(ten) are of prepositional origin. and both Atta and Aetta are authentic names." Bedwyn (S.E. of Marlborough). E. derives from the plant-name, " Bedwind," a kind of convolvulus. The charter (B. 225, K. 133,) which he quotes shows that it was also the name of the stream on which Bedwyn stands. A plant-name by itself would be unusual as a stream-name in A.S. You may find Alr-broc, Aesc-burna, etc.; but I have not so far come across a stream-name of A.S. origin which consists of a plantname pure and simple. I can only end with a query. Is Bedewind a pre-Saxon name rationalised in A.S. times? Beechingstoke (E.S.E. of Devizes). E. does not quote the earliest form of this name, which is in B. 769, K. 390, and appears simply as Stoke. Blackland (S. E. of Calne). E. says "The name can hardly denote anything but a track covered with dark forests." This is pure fancy. The name is used to denote the colour, or, perhaps more frequently, the badness of the soil. Boscombe (S.E. of Amesbury). Surely E. has gone out of his way in taking late forms rather than early as a clue to this name. He has thus to invent a personal name. BOSAN-CUMB, "Bosa's Combe," seems to be the natural derivation. Brigmerston (N. of Amesbury). E. is undoubtedly right; but he does not mention the interesting fact that Brismar is mentioned in D.B. as as holding land here T.R.E. (See notes on Brixton Deverell.) Brixton Deverell (S. of Warminster). Brictric is given in D.B. as a landholder here T.R.E. This, and the case at Brigmerston above, are two examples of a phenomemon which I have only come across in Wiltshire, though examples might, no doubt, be found in other counties, where a place gets its name from an owner of a date contemporary with the extant evidence as to the form of the name. There are other examples in Wiltshire, e.g., Aldred was landholder in Alderstone, in Whiteparish, T.R.E. It suggests that "tuns" might change name with change of owner, just as in modern times such changes of name occur with regard to farms, so that the Brown's Farm of one age may be the Robinson's Farm of the next. It conveys a moral which I have not seen inculcated in books on place-names, viz., that we cannot be sure in the case of A.S. personal names attached to a locality, especially to any form of property, that that name was attached to the locality from the time of its foundation. The "booking," or chartering, of lands, and, too, such a survey as Domesday, would give such names a permanence such as they can hardly have possessed in ages in which they seldom appeared in writing. Brokenborough (N.W. of Malmesbury). The BEORH in this name is |