Spotlight place-names
Shropshire's Welsh Names
Shropshire's Welsh Names
As part of a major AHRC-funded project to complete work on the English Place-Name Society’s survey of Shropshire’s place-names (see the main project page), the project prepared a study of the Welsh names of the county. A substantial volume was devoted to the two hundreds of Clun, in the south-west, and Oswestry, in the north-west, where the Welsh language has contributed extensively to local toponymy. Here there are dozens of Welsh-named villages and hamlets, such as Bettws-y-Crwyn, Llanvair Waterdine, Llanymynech, Trefarclawdd and Argoed; and there are many hundreds of houses and fields with names like Rhyd y Cwm, Pencraig, The Maes and Vron. The volume documented historic spellings for all place-names in the area, from towns and villages to the least of enclosures, woods, streams and streets. Many of these are in English, many in Welsh, and many will illustrate the interface, and sometimes interplay, between the languages. The linguistic origins, the meaning, of the names were explained as far as possible.
The work is a ‘standard’ EPNS survey volume, save for the extent of the Welsh material. However, in two further respects it is unusual. First, it includes a specifically Welsh element-index, listing not only the Welsh vocabulary and personal names from Clun and Oswestry, but also all the Welsh material found elsewhere in the county – for other parts of the west and north also had their Welsh-speakers, though perhaps not in quite such numbers. And second, the study offers an extensive analysis of all this material in an introductory chapter, examining the history of the Welsh language in Shropshire (and its neighbours) in the light of this copious evidence, much of which has not been seriously studied before.
The project-team at CAWCS comprised Helen Watt, experienced archival researcher, whose credits included Welsh Manors and their Records (2000) and work on a digital edition of Edward Llwyd’s correspondence, and David Parsons, Deputy Director of the Survey of English Place-Names and former Director of Nottingham’s Institute for Name-Studies. PhD student Emily Pennifold also contributed to the project, and her thesis on ‘Post-medieval field-names on the Anglo-Welsh border’ provided a detailed case-study of much of Oswestry hundred. The research was based on materials bequeathed to us by Margaret Gelling and her collaborator George Foxall, and on documents from the National Library of Wales and Shropshire Archives; the team also benefited from help provided by the staff of the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, also based at CAWCS, and their collections.
We also worked with Richard Morgan, archivist at Glamorgan Archives, who has published extensively on place-names in east Wales, and whose Welsh Place-Names in Shropshire was first compiled in 1988. Our work incorporates a revised version of this study, and Richard’s advice and experience will undoubtedly make a major contribution throughout the volume.
