Wiltshire is full of them…sunken lanes, or hollow ways (holloways). Volunteer Alan Clarke recently treated us to a wistful look at one on this blog .
Once you know what to look for they are everywhere – part of a modern main road betraying its earlier origins, or they may be tiny, narrow paths winding away up or down, steep hills.
Mary-Ann Ochata, in her book ‘Hidden Histories’ (available in the museum shop), says that any holloway is at least 300 years old, but some may date from prehistoric times. How do we know?
Holloways are formed as a result of regular use over an extended period of time. The action of feet, hooves and wheels, and running surface water, wears down the soil. If the route is hedged, or develops vegetation, thus preventing surrounding collapse, it will become deeper, compacted, and, except in direst weather, is a serviceable routeway. Some will appear on early maps, or they will still clearly link known prehistoric settlements, or can be seen running from early farms to river fords, or up to Drove roads. Occasional archaeological excavation may turn up artefacts to confirm early use. Some may, today, be the main routes into villages, towns or cities, but which have been in use since the foundation of the settlement , and in use long before they were finally properly surfaced (probably in the early 1800s).
In Wiltshire, and in Dorset, it is of course the chalk which wears down in this way. But holloways will have formed in sandstone as we can see around Devizes.
Cutting a long story, and process, short, there has been some work going on behind the scenes at the museum concerning accent and dialect.
The new galleries will include some sound – aural accounts of events – and a certain type of voice and choice of words may be important, for accuracy.
What is the Wiltshire dialect? Indeed what is a dialect? A check with various dictionaries suggests a dialect is a form of a language that people speak in a particular part of the country of a country, containing some different words (and/or different sounding words), and grammar. Most definitions insist that in England a dialect it is not a different language and can, generally, be understood by people who perhaps have a different dialect.
Martin Wakelin* gives this example: A Wiltshire native might ask “How be ee gwine on?” while a person from Yorkshire might say “Oo is thou?” . But we might also meet “What fettle?” up north. Yes, it is all English, but with a strong accent, and said quickly, it could sound like another language!
Are we losing dialects? Or is it accents we are losing? Or are new dialects evolving? In which case, how ancient were the dialects we may have heard in our youth? Only fifty years ago, an elderly native described the local landowner and his “girt hearse”. Funerals come to mind, but he was describing the man’s large horse. A dialect that has almost disappeared? However, in a shop in Salisbury recently two young men were greeting each other very loudly in a rather incomprehensible way (to the rest of us) with much use of “Yo!” and “Bro”. Thus a new dialect is gaining ground. It is likely that local speech has always altered, with established patterns altering as society has changed.
In the twenty-first century, speech patterns and use of words are, it seems, much more likely to be affected by the media than how our parents and grandparents spoke. Just as, in the two or three centuries prior, dialects and accents, particularly in towns and cities, were affected by great shifts of population, and before that, by invasion and settlement.
In Wiltshire, and other, adjacent counties, the use of the ‘v’ sound at the beginning of words which actually start with ‘f’ (as in ‘varmer’ for farmer, and of ‘z’ for ‘s’ (as in ‘zaw’ for saw) is not just fodder for comedians. Apparently it was once common over a great part of the country and shows up in place-names. An example of this from just down the road in Dorset is the town of Verwood, originally ‘Fairwood’. As for grammar we will still occasionally hear “didn’t her?” instead of “didn’t she?”
John Chandler** shares with us a poem by one Edward Slow (b 1841), a carriage-builder from Wilton and one-time mayor (1892). It is entitled ‘Ower Girt Zeptember Vair’ and was written for ‘leabourin volk’. It begins:
“Zee yonder Quack begins his clack,
Like a maniac he spouts til he is black;
Zays he , mines the tack,
If ya’ve pains in tha back,
Ar any wur else, I’ll cure tha attack…”
Yes – true dialect. We understand it, although at least one word may be completely foreign to us (clack – loud talk) , and the spellings necessary to elucidate those sounds, and consequently the sounds of the words, are unfamiliar.
Another sample:
“..Then Father Crismus mead a spache,
A wishen ael good cheer;
Likewise a merry Crismis tide,
An happy, bright new year.
An atter that, they ate an drunk, As much as they wur willin;
Then out comes grammer, an she gies To every man a shillin…” “(extract sourced from Wikipedia)
It is great fun to recite these out loud!
* Martin Wakelin (1978) ‘Discovering English Dialects’
One of the joys of this blog is that those of us who write for it, and those who read it, learn so much in the process.
A recent blog mentioned Salisbury’s Fisherton Gaol where, amongst others, the Swing rioters of the 1830s (agricultural riots) were incarcerated prior to, in some cases, transportation to Australia. The 1832 map included there showed the gaol close to the Devizes Road junction at what is today the St Paul’s roundabout. This was, of course, the new gaol, completed in 1822.
The earlier Fisherton Gaol, of its time, and very small, had become overcrowded, and despite some attempts to improve it in the previous century, had to be replaced. In a more recent blog, we had this, courtesy of Alan Crooks and Fisherton History Society:
“…in 1568 the Justices of the Peace determined to build a new gaol, roughly where the former Infirmary is on the South side of Fisherton Street. In his book, ‘Endless Street’, John Chandler writes that “As a result of delays caused by resentful ratepayers unaccustomed to so large an expense, Fisherton Gaol took ten years to complete. Old Sarum was plundered for stone, and a new two-storey building was erected, seventeen by nine metres, with seven small barred windows, inside a retaining wall seven metres high. For over two centuries this building was repaired and modified, altered and extended, and continued to serve as the county gaol until the beginning of the nineteenth century”.
To mop up any confusion created, there were, of course, two different gaol buildings . The old building (above), referred to by Alan Crooks in his blog, was purchased by the Salisbury Infirmary after 1822 and hence the clocktower built on part of it later.
Ruth Newman and Jane Howells in their book, ‘Salisbury Past’, included this description of the new gaol where the rioters were held:
“The new county gaol was completed in 1822 near the present day St Paul’s roundabout. Costing £28 000 it comprised 96 cells and seven courtyards. Prisoners were classified, cells whitewashed, debtors separated from common criminalsand inspection enforced. ……. Lurid accounts exist of public executions at the gallows nearby but the spectacle ended in 1855, in the same decade the stocks in the market place disappeared .”
Many of the enlightened views about prisons by this time were as a result of the work of Elizabeth Fry (1780 – 1845), a Quaker, who said this about helping prisoners, especially females, whom she visited:
” (Prisons should be set up).. … to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of sobriety, order, and industry, which may render them docile and peaceable while in prison, and respectable when they leave it.”
One on-line site says this about prisons at the time, before reforms (and thus possibly true of the original old Fisherton Gaol):
“At Newgate, women awaiting trial for stealing apples were crammed into the same cell as women who had been convicted of murder or forgery (both capital crimes). Women ate, defecated, and slept in the same confined area. If an inmate had children, they accompanied her to prison and lived in the same inhumane conditions. For those without help from family, friends, or charities, the options were to beg and to steal food, or to starve to death. Many women begged for alcohol as well, languishing naked and drunk. The sight of children clinging to their mothers as they were dragged to the gallows was a scene replayed time and again.“
As early as 1785 there were concerns however. There is an interesting piece to confirm that from the Salisbury and Winchester Journal of that date, via a Maureen Withey of Wiltshire opc.
DUNT – as in “Come out of that book. You’ll read yourself DUNT (muddle-headed)!
PUSH – a boil (Middle German “pust” – a pimple or blister)
ON THE HUH – as in “Put that straight, it’s on the HUH” (awry, lop-sided. Old English “awoh” – awry)
CHAITS – as in “Eat up all those CHAITS” (scraps or leavings on a plate)
DAWZLED – confused or bewildered
LOKE – a lane, usually grassy and private between two houses or leading to fields (Old English – “loca”)
NUMB CHANCE ON HORSEBACK – someone who doesn’t reply when spoken to , as in “Don’t just sit there like numb-chance on horseback, say something!”
TEETA-MA-TORTA – a seesaw (“Teeta-ma-torta, The King of Spain’s daughter, Came across the water, One, two, three”)
Oxfordshire and central England
PITCHTYPOLE – head over heels (probably from ‘pitch’ OE – thrust or throw into the ground, and ‘pol’ ?Dutch – head)
SLOMMACK – an untidy person (no origin found. Poss. close to ‘slum’)
TEWLY STOMACHED – a weak constitution
OMPERLODGE – to disagree (recorded in 1809 but no origin foud)
MUNDLE – to do something clumsily (poss. from Old Norse – a stick for stirring)
Wiltshire
DAP – plimsolls, or flat, rubber-soled canvas sports shoes first developed in England in the 1830s. Sometimes called sand shoes. The word ‘dap’ is associated with the sound that the shoes make, and British soldiers called them ‘road slappers’ for the same reason. Also known as ‘plimsolls’ possibly because the line of the rubber on the side of the shoe was similar to the plimsoll line on ships – apparently….
FLITTERMOUSE – a bat (dialect words are often onomatopoeic or metaphoric)
BILLY BUTTONS – a ‘daft’ lad (also, more properly, an Australian daisy flower)
Billy Buttons is also a Wiltshire name for woodlice. A woodlouse must be the only creature to have such a variety of names. Does it suggest a fondness? In 2002, a naturalist had so far discovered circa 150 different names for them, including ‘slater’, bibble bug, tiggy hog, cudworm, chisel bob, chuggy pig, curly button, and so on. In my house we called them baby armadillos.
Sources: various! Amazingly, quite a lot of these words do actually appear in dictionaries!
Mary was brought up within two miles of Sutton Hoo – famous burial place of 7th Century Anglo-Saxon ‘Royalty’.She writes:
In Woodbridge in Suffolk, a short-cut lane between two streets was always called by locals “ship medda”. Then the local council put up a sign. It said “Ship Meadow Walk”. Ships in the Meadow? What did this mean, and had we just been lazy in our speaking or was this a lingering Anglo-Saxon pronunciation? Things became a little clearer later. SHEEP Meadow Walk! From scēp med ‘sheep meadow’ (Old English) .
A few years ago I was talking with a Dutch friend and used the word “doke” meaning a small hollow or indentation. I didn’t need to explain, she understood perfectly. It was as familiar to her as it was to me. It’s a Dutch word with the same meaning as the Suffolk dialect word. Did this also come across in Anglo-Saxon times, or was It used later by traders coming up the River Deben and adopted locally?
I also use the word “rove” for a scab on a healing wound. Apparently the Norwegians have a word “ruva” meaning exactly the same.
The origins of dialect (use of ‘unusual’ words, and more) and accent (how they are pronounced) are fascinating. They have much to do with when an area was settled and by whom. It was in areas of the country which remained somewhat remote and where people were less mobile, that this may be most apparent.
Thank you Mary for an interesting item which will likely have us all trying to remember local words from our younger days.
We hope readers might contribute some examples. Just click on the ‘Leave a Comment’ button, top right of blog item.
There is a glossary of Wiltshire dialect words available on-line. Published in 1893, we might say it is out-of-date but of course, the earlier the better with these topics, compiled before some words disappeared for ever.
Sophie Hawke, Finds Liaison Officer for Wiltshire:
Hello, I am the new Finds Liaison Officer for Wiltshire, job sharing with Wil Partridge at The Salisbury Museum. I started in my new role at the beginning of January but have only managed three days in the office so far, due to Covid lockdown restrictions.
Like Wil, I have been working from home. This is a bonus in some ways as it’s warmer at home than in the office (we are situated directly above the medieval porch at work so any heat rises up to the ceiling and stays there) and my travel time to work is currently ten seconds as opposed to an hour. On the down side, I have to tidy up before any Zoom calls and hope that no-one rings the doorbell whilst I’m unmuted on Zoom as my dogs will bark incessantly at the bell.
I have always been fascinated by archaeology. I joined the Young Archaeologists’ Club in Dorchester, Dorset aged 10 (a long time ago), then went on my first dig aged 11, at Dewlish Roman villa. I was hooked!
Fast forward a few years, I studied at University of Bristol for a Certificate in Archaeology with Mick Aston as my tutor, started a family, did an Open University degree, then immediately returned to Bristol Uni, with Mick as one of my lecturers, for a part time MA in Landscape Archaeology.
During all this, I started work at a secondary school and stayed for 15 years, as part of my role there was (and still is in a voluntary capacity) as Archaeology Liaison Officer for the Roman villa under the School playing field. In 2018, I was awarded a Headley Trust internship with the Portable Antiquities Scheme at The Salisbury Museum, and Historic England. Following this I worked for Historic England as a Finds Supervisor and just before Christmas 2020, I was offered this Wiltshire FLO job. I love working with finds, meeting people and doing research so this is my dream job! My favourite find to date is a hoard of Roman pewter found near Westbury. When the finder sent photos of it, Wil and I couldn’t believe our eyes as it contained a lead tank (see photo below), quite a rare find, which may be a portable font.
We have a lovely team of PAS volunteers who help with the identifying and research of finds. When we are eventually all allowed back in the office, there will be cake and we can enjoy working together again as a team. Wil and I are currently working through the finds that came in last year, and as I write this, limited local metal detecting is now permitted as exercise under updated Government Covid regulations. I imagine we will be extremely busy once both The Salisbury Museum and Wiltshire Museum are allowed to reopen and we can make appointments to see finders. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before that happens! We also like to see finds that people have made whilst gardening or out walking etc. and not just metal objects. You can contact us via email: PAS@salisburymuseum.org.uk or follow us on Twitter @FLOWilts
You can find out more about the Portable Antiquities Scheme and current Government advice on searching for archaeological finds during Covid, on the Portable Antiquities Scheme Website.
I look forward to meeting many of you in the (hopefully) not too distant future!
We, at Salisbury Museum, know Sophie already, as she explains above. The team of PAS Volunteers look forward to working with her again.
The Director of The Salisbury Museum, Adrian Green, takes us to Figsbury Rings, north of Salisbury, and tells us a little of its history. Once believed to be built by the Romans (and named Chlorus’s Camp) , it is, of course, much older, and related to other pre-historic sites in Wiltshire and further afield.
It may have been a temporary enclosure as it was apparently never permanently occupied, unlike others such as Old Sarum, etc. There is a circular inner ditch, originally thought to be a quarry for the outer bank but it seems it is even earlier than the outer earthwork , by perhaps 2 000 plus years.
This earlier feature may be a henge – a ritual feature with the Iron Age peoples simply re-using the site. Very little is known about it.
It is an 11.2 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest, owned and managed by the National Trust.
Early on, and into the Middle Ages, weaving was done in the home, along with the spinning and all the other processes of cloth making. An upright loom is the simplest type. Something like the example below would have been used in the Early Medieval (Saxon) period, developed further as time went on.
Notice the weights in each case. These held the vertical threads (the warp) straight while the weaver threaded the weft through those threads with a shuttle, or, in this case, a ‘weaving sword’. For archaeologists it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between loom weights and spindle whorls (see earlier blog) but here is a probable example:
By the sixteenth century the country’s (and Wiltshire’s) textile industry was well established and cloth was being exported into Europe. The industry was, then, what is now described as ‘domestic’ – carried out in the home. Some tasks, such as ‘fulling’ (a process of cleaning, thickening and pre-shrinking the completed cloth) could, however, be achieved by using water mills, but might also be done in the home. The whole family could be involved in ‘treading’ the cloth in vats, much like traditional methods of making wine. Fuller’s Earth, a traditional natural additive to this process was found locally in Wiltshire. The Romans used urine…. Both helped whiten the cloth.
Because it was such a profitable industry, ‘middle men’ had become involved. No doubt this was partly of necessity, as locals in the Wylye Valley, for example, would have found it difficult, costly and inefficient to try and organise export of their surplus abroad on their own. However, ‘middle men’ should have come with a health warning.
The system usually worked like this: a ‘clothier’ would set up supply routes in response to demand from elsewhere, organise transport and pay a wage to spinsters, taking their excess yarn to local weavers, and in turn paying them to produce cloth. The clothier wanted his share of the profits of course, and this often led to low wages for the workers, especially if demand fell away. There were also attempts to create monopolies by thwarting independent producers. All of this led to unrest. Legislation was continually being brought in to protect everyone but it was difficult to enforce. in 1593 there were riots in Warminster over low wages and yet more legislation was introduced.
Families had come to specialise rather than necessarily carrying out all the processes themselves as once might have been the case. As early as 1379 tax records show that between Heytesbury and Codford there were nine householders recorded as ‘fullers’. A water fulling mill at Upton Lovell was probably one already operating at that time in the Wylye Valley. By the end of the nineteenth century OS maps of Upton Lovell indicate a ‘cloth factory’, possibly on the same site as the original mill. It was one of the last to survive in the valley, the owners having introduced steam power , and at one point in the early 19th century it employed 400 workers, most coming from outside the valley.
The Wylye was well known for its ‘white cloth’, a heavy material for outer wear. Useful at home, but also exported to north west Europe. It was undyed because the water was too hard to allow dyers to achieve an even colour. Dyers were not common therefore, except perhaps in Salisbury, although there is a Dyers’ Lane in Wylye village itself and Dyer was not an uncommon surname in the county.
In the seventeenth century, European wars, and, in Britain, the Civil War of the 1640s, affected trade and there was depression in the textile industry, leading to hard times for Wiltshire and the Wylye valley.
There had, anyway, been complaints from the London markets about the quality of the Wiltshire wool. The quality of the finished cloth varied widely and in addition there were theories that the wool from the Wiltshire horned sheep was becoming coarser. The Sussex Downs variety was introduced to try and solve this problem and eventually took over the Downs here. This, together with the use of finer, imported Spanish wool to mix with the local fleece improved quality and allowed colours to be introduced.
Meanwhile, in the early 1600s, Christopher Potticary, a clothier from Stockton in the Wylye Valley, introduced what was called ‘say-dyed’ cloth. This was cloth dyed before fulling which worked well, and this technique spread throughout the county. It was an excellent solution to the dying problems but encouraged further experimentation. Wiltshire then became famous for ‘medleys’, where the finer Spanish thread was dyed before weaving. It gave a pleasing textured, flecked look to the cloth. Druggets were also produced – cloth which was printed on one side. Full marks all round for finding ways… Out of this latter technique grew the later carpet industry, famously centred on Wilton.
As explained earlier, fulling was a process which had long since been ‘mechanised’ through the use of water power. The flowing river would turn a water wheel which, via cogs, would convert the turning motion to an up and down action to power heavy wooden hammers. It was particularly important in Wiltshire where the cloth was thick and heavy and the Wylye river was suited to this.
Meanwhile, in 1733, a ‘flying shuttle’ was invented in Lancashire which allowed the weaver to weave one set of threads through the other simply by pulling a chord which made the process quicker and allowed wide cloth to be made by only one operator. Spinsters in their homes were hard put to keep up but by the second half of that century spinning frames had also been developed which spun more several threads at once and then a spinning machine that could be powered by water wheels, and a little later, steam engines. The Industrial Revolution, the factory age, had begun and Wiltshire would change.
It was in the 1770s that machinery was first introduced to the valley at Warminster, provoking riots amongst local producers. In Heytesbury, the Everetts, a successful mill owning family with a chain of mills in the valley, built a mill at Greenlands to the west of the village and another in Mill Lane to the east. One made broadcloth (a dense cloth, almost felt) and the other twilled cloth (woven to give a raised diagonal texture). These water mills, some also now using steam engines, were built to drive the new machinery introduced into the cloth industry. In 1822 there were further riots, in Crockerton and Heytesbury.
Factories (if producing cloth they continued to be known as ‘mills’) in Crockerton and Upton Lovell survived into the last decades of the 1800s. But these, and others all over south west Wiltshire were long since struggling and gone by 1900. Issues around moving coal and accessing the new raw material, cotton, contributed to the end. There was some attempt to establish a silk weaving industry in the area but this too faded away. The textile industry in Wiltshire was at an end. Many Wiltshire people would emigrate at this time.
That is another story…
Resources used:
KH Rogers 1976 ‘Wiltshire and Somerset Woollen Mills’
Anthony Houghton-Brown 1978 ‘Water Mills of the Wylye Valley’
Eric Kerridge 1985 ‘Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England’
Danny Howell website at dannyhowell.net
Wiltshire and Swindon Archives accessed on-line at history.wiltshire.gov.uk
While being involved for sometime on research centred on the Wylye Valley, I have come across a number of names of places and features that were unfamiliar to me. Thus some considerable ‘incidental learning’ has taken place…
Village and town names such as Heytesbury, Boyton and Tytherington, and most of the other ‘burhs’ (forts) and ‘tons’ (farmsteads) – all ‘Saxon’ (Old English) names – are almost certainly named after people. The first, Heytesbury, possibly named after a woman, the latter perhaps a nickname (meaning ‘feeble’). Most of these names appear in the Domesday Book, under various different spellings.
Most place names in the valley are probably Saxon in origin, but some names are older. Knook, a tiny village today, is on the north side of the river, and its name is Celtic or ‘Welsh’, ‘Britonnic’ or Early British, depending which expert’s book you consult. At any rate, it is pre-Roman (in use for more than 2 000 years). Knook also appears on maps as the name of an Iron Age ‘castle’ and farm settlements a little to the north, on Salisbury Plain. In fact those are probably the original settlements with this name, the river-side village coming later. The Welsh for ‘hillock’ is ‘cnwc’.
Apparently Wiltshire has more such Early British names than any English county except Cornwall.
‘Bake’ is a name which turns up frequently. Indeed, just west of Salisbury, on the Coombe Bissett road is Bake Farm. If you have been strawberry picking in the past, you may have known it. Apparently ‘baking’ in this sense is what you do when you have some rough land and you begin to hack at the rough top soil, then burn the roots, etc to reclaim it for crop growing. The word ‘Brake’ may be the same and appears on the Great Ridge south of Sutton Veny, near Warminster (Botley Oak Brake). There is also a Bake Farm at Berwick St Leonard, on the far side of the Great Ridge, and an area called The Bake north east of Chilmark. All are on high ground, probably with shallow soil, likely to have been used for crops only when desperate. There are also individual fields called Bake all along the valley floor, presumably, in these cases, too boggy to be used except when desperate…
‘Veny’ by the way, was originally ‘Fenny’ – a marshy spot. The village of Sutton Veny appears in Domesday but simply as Sudtone or Sutone (South farm) to distinguish it from Nortone (North farm, today Norton Bavant). ‘Bavant’ was a family name.
Cold Kitchen Hill, above Kingston Deverill, is a very ancient monument, usually thought to be an Iron age and later Roman temple site of which there are a surprising number in this part of Wiltshire. A brooch as early as 500BC has been found there, along with other, Roman, brooches, coins and building stone. The word ‘Cold’ in a name usually means an unsuitable place, ie poor soil, persistent damp, etc. ‘Kitchen’ in a name usually means a place to do with domestic buildings but it is thought the name is not as old as the importance of the site.
Deverill is the old name given to the upper reaches of the Wylye. When you get to Cold Kitchen in the Deverill valley you are not far from the source at White Sheet Downs near Maiden Bradley. The name Deverill apparently also has Celtic/British/Welsh origins perhaps meaning ‘water in a fertile region’. Certainly appropriate! Wilton and Wiltshire (Wiltonshire) were named after the river Wylye, which makes that name early, probably pre- Roman.
There are interesting pointers in some names to the valley’ s industrial history – textiles – too. More on this later.
Your blogger is no expert. As mentioned, this has been part of a learning curve for me. If anyone has anything to add here – please do!
I have relied heavily on ‘The Place Names of Wiltshire’ Eds Gover, Mawer, Stenton CUP 1939. This book came, second-hand, from a library in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, where it had apparently never been loaned out. It is now much loved…..
Last week, Volunteers from Salisbury Museum were involved in excavations in the depths of beautiful Wiltshire countryside, west of Salisbury.
Friend of the museum, archaeologist Dr David Roberts, has been digging in this particular area for a decade, looking mainly at Roman remains, and it continues to bring forth surprises!