• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Macabre Place Names

Stormkhan said:
and Snodland, in Kent, has always made me wonder ... what's a "snod"?
Click to expand...

No idea but the vast majority of Snodland is an absolute dump. :)
 
On a sort of related note - there's a place near where I grew up in Somerset called Snap Hill. Apperently, this is derived from the OE words 'snaP' and 'hyll' and means 'the killing hill'. There also another place called Vagg Hill, which means 'the offering hill'. Offering what, one wonders... ;)
 
JerryB said:
There also another place called Vagg Hill, which means 'the offering hill'. Offering what, one wonders... ;)
Click to expand...

Just for the sake of lateral thinking: the hill itself could be the offering as opposed to being the site of such an action. Equally, that offering need not be between men and other beings but could be some kind of symbolic feudal appeasement.

Just thinkin' aloud.
 
trauma said:
...reminds me of "Hob Lane" in Quatermass and the pit...I think there's one of those on the outskirts of Bury somewhere. Oh, and there's Boggart Hole Clough...strange name for a park...
Click to expand...

There's a Hob Lane in the pennines near me. The legendary, haunted 'Old Silent Inn' is built on that road too :eek:

Not macabre, but I've heard there's a Monkseaton Mine near Newcastle... Makes you wonder what the local clergy do to you :D
 
The town of Redditch in Worcestershire, has an area called "Headless Cross"
 
Apparently, there's a place in Alberta (USA) called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump...
 
The Yithian said:
No idea but the vast majority of Snodland is an absolute dump. :)
Click to expand...

Apparently it comes from an Old English personal name, so 'Snodland' means 'Land of Snodd's people'. Nothing sinister but not an attractive name.
 
the isle of thanet in kent is so named due to nothing was able to survive on the island so the romans named it after the greek god thanatos. therefore it is the isle of death which is quite appropriate apart from the fact that it isn't actually an island anymore :rolleyes:
 
Drive up the A491 from Lickey End (nr. Bromsgrove) and you come across a Bell End.

Near the M8 in Scotland is Turdees (I bet it's a bit of a dump)...

Take a wrong turn off the B9071 in Shetland and you could find yourself stuck in Twatt (it's a right hole!)...

:)
 
Cujo said:
As I've mentioned to a few people Aberdeen has a street called Guest Row. On old maps it's Ghaist Row, which means street of Ghosts or Spirits. Back then the houses on Ghaist Row had a clear vew of the local church yard and local supersticion had it that you could see the spirits of the dead hanging about there at night.

Cujo
Click to expand...

Where in Aberdeen is that Cujo? Can't find reference to it
 
UserName said:
Where in Aberdeen is that Cujo? Can't find reference to it
Click to expand...

The back of E&M's There's a black and gold plaque on one of the buidlings about it.

Cujo
 
Near Lancaster there is a small village or hamlet named 'Killcrash'.
 
Cujo said:
The back of E&M's There's a black and gold plaque on one of the buidlings about it.

Cujo
Click to expand...

Cheers, went & had a look this afternoon. You learn something new every day eh!
 
My father tells the story of getting lost in thick fog in Derby sometime in the 60s. Eventually he stopped the car, and shone a torch on a street sign , which read "Deadman's Lane".

Wooo! Spooky dildos!
 
Drove through the village of Killinghall near Harrogate the other day.

We didn't stop...
 
David Raven said:
Drove through the village of Killinghall near Harrogate the other day.

We didn't stop...
Click to expand...

:_omg:

Thanks for the warning...:eek!!!!:
 
Apparently, there's a place in Alberta (USA) called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump...
__________________
I had a postcard from a friend holidaying in Canada and the stamp depicted the place. It's a sheer crag somewhere out on the prairie. I assume buffalo used to fall/jump off it??!!

Also in Worcestershire is an Upton Snodsbury. Without wishing to sound judgemental i imagine the place to be full of upper class twits:eek:
 
I used to work near a very small grassed area in London that everyone knew as Itchy Park.

I assumed it was becasue of the large amount of vagrants who used it to sleep in it. I learnt later it was a plague pit and cannot be built on because of the large amount of bodies buried.

Incidentally it's outside New Scotland yard, where I worked.
 
bulldog said:
Apparently, there's a place in Alberta (USA) called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump...
__________________
I had a postcard from a friend holidaying in Canada and the stamp depicted the place. It's a sheer crag somewhere out on the prairie. I assume buffalo used to fall/jump off it??!!
Click to expand...

More accurately, they'd be driven over it by Indians.

Weird. There's a Skeleton Park in my town, so named because it was a cemetary, and as I was Googling for some background on it, I came across a Ghoststudy.com link. (It's a gap in the trees, you wankers :rolleyes: There's enough genuinely Fortean stuff in this town without you making stuff up)

More on Skeleton Park here I do take some issue with that site, however. "Trouble is very few people here know it by its real name, they have grown up like myself calling it Skeleton Park. [sic] Very few actually knowing the real reason it is called that." Not true; it's accepted knowledge around here.

There's a Devil's Lake within half an hour of here. Also, I grew up in North Bay (northern Ontario) and there are a lot of places with Manitou (Great Spirit) in the name up there.
 
There is Coven just outside of Wolverhampton near Brewood.

Pouk Hill in Walsall near to Junction 10 of the M6, which I think got a mention in a Local History book review in FT a while ago.
 
Gyrtrash said:
There's a Hob Lane in the pennines near me. The legendary, haunted 'Old Silent Inn' is built on that road too :eek:
Click to expand...

We called in for a swift pint at the weekend, didn't see any ghosties though...

Stopping in Haworth earlier in the day, we noticed the local 'New Age' shoppe was located in a curiously named street :D
 
I dunno if these have been mentioned, but just outside Ely (Cambs.) are a couple of villages with kinda spooky names:

Witcham
Witchford
Coveney

I don't know what the derivation of the last one was, but the information boards calimed that the first two were derived from the presence of Witch(Wych?) Elms in the area.

I have my doubts.

Anyway, I'm from Coventry (La La La!), which isn't even slightly derived from covens, or anything interesting. Still, at least we have a statue of a bare-naked lady in the city centre :D
 
There's a place just outside of Bicester, Oxfordshire called Graven Hill. I've heard there was an ancient battle on there and its filled with the leftover corpses. There's an MOD site that circles it so no-one's allowed up there... be interesting to know if it really is a massive grave site... or just a secret MOD bunker....

Can't miss it from the M40 either. Its bloody massive. ;)
 
Agent Buffy said:
I dunno if these have been mentioned, but just outside Ely (Cambs.) are a couple of villages with kinda spooky names:

Witcham
Witchford
Coveney

I don't know what the derivation of the last one was, but the information boards calimed that the first two were derived from the presence of Witch(Wych?) Elms in the area.

I have my doubts.

Anyway, I'm from Coventry (La La La!), which isn't even slightly derived from covens, or anything interesting. Still, at least we have a statue of a bare-naked lady in the city centre :D
Click to expand...

From the Place Names of Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely, the English Place Names Society Vol XIX, pub. 1943.

COVENEY.

Coueneia c. 1060
Conye 1319.

This may be 'Cofa's' island or it may be 'island in the bay'.... The topography sugests that when Coveney was an island it was situated in a deep bay, now represented by the west fen.
 
Following on from the Cornwall floods of yesterday, the news came up with another macabre place name.... Slaughterbridge. Sounds a bit ominous to me.
 
Wych/wich means 'salt'' as in the three Cheshire wiches- Northwich, Middlewich and Nantwich, all ancient centres of salt production.
 
Saw an amusing one around here once while driving around. Called "R. D. Mize Road" ... It was named after someone, so it wasn't intended to be morbid or anything. But they had to know what it sounded like :p
 
There's a village in Shetland called Twatt.
Yes, I got my photo taken next to the sign!

Apparantly they have a terrible time buying stuff mail-order. The telephonist just hang up on them when they're taking the address.
 
There is a place in Bedfordshire called TODMORDEN. In english this may just be another weird name but in german it translates literally into DEATHKILLING. I wonder if the saxons had anything to do with it???
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top