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Macabre Place Names

Perhaps the bright orange water was cadmium salts ? Lovely and poisonous . I will never forget the little wooded valley that housed the Reckitts Blue factory up in Cumbria ( ? Maybe Lancashire , probably both at different times ) The whole place was blue, the houses and trees as well as the tiny factory . It is probably long gone , does anyone know ?
I go past the Cannards Grave Inn sometimes but havn't noticed a name change . An arcaeologist friend thinks the name was derived from Kenward's Grove ( Kenward was some sort of saxon invader but you know arcaeologists , see things everywhere )
 
As a child growing up in the state of Wyoming, my family used to visit a popular camping spot called "Hell's Half-Acre", sort of a deranged nasty looking mini grand canyon. It was located in the, wait for it, "Badlands". Also grew up close to "Devils Tower" of Close Encounters fame.
 
Hollywood Florida was originally planned to be what Hollywood California is now.
 
Cannards Grave

Marion - Just did a Scoot search (criteria: pubs in Shepton Mallet)and apparently it's called Cannard's Well Inn now (an oxymoron given the original sign...:D )
 
The Edinburgh suburb of Liberton gets its name from the leper colony which was there in the Middle Ages.
 
There's a Dangerous Corner here in Lancashire. We drove by it the other week, and it didn't look at all dangerous to me.
 
How did Braintree get its name anyway? I remember the first time I heard it as a kid and it conjured up a weird image.

Beware, though. If you go there, you could meet a Rotten End.
 
I always snigger when I see road signs for Scotchman's Nob.............

The Henley/Reading area has a "Gallowstree Common" and a small area called "Hag Pits" (with a Hag Pits House).

Not macabre - but "Cockpole Green" sounds disturbing.

Also, worthy of mention are Craizies Hill, Hangings Grove and Tokers Green.
 
There is a lane on the road from mine to my bird's called Hangings Lane where...you guessed it! Spooky at night!
 
David said:
Puckeridge, on the A10 in Hertfordshire, the name means a goblin haunted ridge.:monster:
Click to expand...

I used to work with a guy called Puckeridge.
He didn't look as if he was haunted by goblins, though.
 
Places near me: Ugley, Ugley Green and Nasty!
I grew up in a road called Blackmoor Wood - so called, because it was once a wood on boggy land.
 
Boggle Hole in North Yorkshire
It's looks a lot nicer than it sounds!
 
In Dublin there is an area called 'Blackpitts', which is supposed to have been a plague burial spot. There is also a suburb called 'Leopardstown', but it has nothing to do with big cats. It is a corruption of 'Leperstown', and a leper coloney (or hospital) was located there in medieval times.
 
When I was a student I went on a dig at Bordesley Abbey in Redditch.

I remember being told that Redditch gained its name due to the blood that ran in the ditches when the monks were slaughtered during the reformation.

The story is, no doubt a pile of crap. Couldn't help but notice that the local soil was naturally rather red.

Still, not as interesting is it.
 
When I lived in the village of Chedgrave, in Norfolk, which adjoins the town of Loddon, I lived down a street known simply as "The Pits". At the top end of this cul-de-sac was a crater-like hole which was used as a children's playground. Apparently this was a dry stone-age mine/quarry much like those that form the Norfolk Boards, a stones throw away. My research for my History GCSE seemed to indicated that either this, and the river Chet, which passed the road's foot, together gave the village it's name.

I'll see if I can find a link...
 
more names

I found this thread really interesting. For my job I drive around a lot,so will take extra notice in future, in fact I'll be poring over my map tonight--if I get time. In Halifax, where I work--and they did used to say--from hell,hull and halifax the good lord deliver us--we still have a gibbet--not in use I hasten to add ! I have a postcard of it if anyone would like to see it--it is one of the first executing machines,like the Scottish maiden and the French guillotine. In the town we have Gibbet Street named after it, and also a Goal Lane. Well, thought these might be appropriate for the trread,I'll look out for more!

Barbara
 
To save you the hassle of scanning Barbara, here you go :

Gibbet Gibbet
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed at the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080317012457/http://www.metaphor.dk/guillotine/Pages/gibbet.html

NOTE: The Halifax Gibbet is a variant type of guillotine rather than a device for hanging criminals either alive for execution or dead as a warning to others.

Halifax gibbet.jpg
​

As well as a picture there is some fascinating text, including at least one origin of 'the running man'.

Thank you for starting me googling :)
 
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A bit late...

This thread seems to have returned after a long pause and as I was flipping through the earlier posts I spotted this


Annasdottir said:
There's a Dangerous Corner here in Lancashire. We drove by it the other week, and it didn't look at all dangerous to me.
Click to expand...

It reminded me of something. There are at least two Dangerous Corners in Lancashire one near Atherton just outside Wigan, the other also near Appley Bridge, again not far from Wigan. There is legend attached to one of them, I’m not sure which, that goes something like this:


A long time ago a countryman took a young wife. Suddenly, after a few happy years of marriage the wife fell ill and died.

On the way to the graveyard, as the hearse rounded the corner, the horse started, the driver jerked the hearse, an the coffin slid to the ground and burst open at the feet of the mourning husband who was following behind.

His wife stirred, then woke, the countryman was overjoyed – his wife wasn’t dead but had fallen into a deep trance, from which the shock of the fall had woken her

They returned home and spent many more happy years together. Eventually in her old age the wife died.

Once more the husband followed the hearse to graveyard.

As they rounded the corner the husband and other mourners heard a spectral voice:

‘Take care, coachman, for this is a DANGEROUS CORNER.’
 
there's a place round here that's known to the people i asked as "hangman's alley"
I wonder if it is history related or more due to the current scary nature of it
 
About 300 metres from my home there is an island commonly known as Rat Island. It was so called because it was where transportees to Australia were kept before being put on the ship from Portsmouth.
The Island is also reputed to have been an islation unit for plague victims hundreds of years ago.
Not a scary name but a scary history!
 
Near where I am from in Westmeath there is a field known as the 'Hangmans Field'. It was a very old man who told me about it and he did not know the origin of the name, only that nothing had happened there even in his mothers time - this would be going back to about the 1830s. But maybe before that... Does not appear on maps, just a local name for it.
 
I live near a swamp called "Hockomock Swamp" by the native Algonquians, and it's supposed to mean "Place of the Spirits" in that tongue.


Trace Mann
 
Coincidentally (or not) there is a release of early Quatermass series and movie (but not the Pit) out on DVD now -

see FT 172:65 (also a competition to win copies).

(Why do I enter these comps when I don't even have a DVD player? :confused: :D )
 
Buryfields

In the centre of Ware there is an open space called 'Buryfields'. The local story is that it was the field where plague victims were buried.

Ware bargees used to take food into London in their barges. Once the food had been dropped off Londoners gave the bargees dead plague bodies to bury in Ware. The same barges were then used to take more food into London. Yuk!

Alas, the truth is not as nasty. Ware bargees did take food into London, but even in the seventeenth century people were not daft enough to put bodies in places where food was going to be placed.

The word 'Buryfields' means fields belonging to the borough (i.e. the borough of Ware).
 
'Bury'...

The ley-hunter Alfred Watkins thought that the use of the word 'bury' in place names might be an instinctive thing. He reckoned it could originate from the action of burying things or people under the ancient earth mounds.


Talking of burial mounds, and odd names, here's a pic of Willy Howe (stop laughing at the back!) I took a few weeks ago...
 
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