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Macabre Place Names

I have always been fascinated by Catbrain Hill (just outside Bristol) and after reading through this interesting thread I went and did a little research (ok, wikipedia isn't real research, but...)

I AM SO DISAPPOINTED! Catbrain Hill has nothing to do with Cats OR brains!

Catbrain Hill, or simply known as Catbrain, is a small village near the north of Bristol, at the edge of neighbouring district South Gloucestershire, England. It is located by Cribbs Causeway, on a road that contains many car dealerships.
The name is often found humorous by Bristol residents and has been the subject of many jokes. A new housing estate has been recently constructed at Catbrain. At the bottom of the hill the lies Filton airfield.
The name "Catbrain" derives from the Middle English "cattes brazen"[1] which is a reference to the rough clay mixed with stones that is characteristic soil type of the location, though some speculation has been made that it derives from the Welsh Cath Bregion - Cath being a battlefield. [2]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catbrain

By the way, I have never heard any of these jokes which Catbrain Hill has supposedly been the subject of, so if anyone knows any or fancies making some up, please do!
 
I rather like the sound of Tombland in Norwich. Sadly, it has nothing to do with tombs... but is a corruption of an old word meaning an open space apparently.
 
wairddeb said:
I rather like the sound of Tombland in Norwich. Sadly, it has nothing to do with tombs... but is a corruption of an old word meaning an open space apparently.
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Ahhh that's what it means. I always assumed it was due to the proximity to the cathderal and the tombs in there. In my head it was logical anyway.
 
As noted earlier in the thread, there is a Gibbet Hill in Coventry close to the border with Warwickshire, the next County along. Although there is Gibbet on display. ;)

At the bottom of my old road in Kenilworth there is a poorly lit path marked on all maps going back through the years purely as 'Black Pad,' which always seemed a little creepy as a kid, but probably just means 'Dark Path' or similar.

In Shrewsbury, there is a small road leading up off one of the main roads called 'Grope Lane'. We can at least imagine how it came by that name...

And in Aberystwyth, where I went to University, there was a 'Great Darkgate Street,' which always seemed like an excellent name to me. But actually got it's name from being the former site of a large gate, which was part of a former town wall.

There was also the most excellent 'Loveden Road,' on which a group of us almost rented a house in our second year.
 
Cincinnati has a "Old Spooky Hollow Lane."

Alas for the purposes of our discussion I know of no "Old Spooks" connected with this stretch or road nor anything else Paranormal.

It merely seems to be one of those lower-lying areas where wisps of spooky fogs gather.
 
It doesn't have to be haunted to be spooky of course. :shock:
 
CuriousIdent said:
...........In Shrewsbury, there is a small road leading up off one of the main roads called 'Grope Lane'. We can at least imagine how it came by that name..................
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One of the original names for Threadneedle Street in the City of London was "Grope Countstreet" See:- http://wapedia.mobi/en/Gropecunt_Lane

I think this came up in an earlier Fortian thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
rynner said:
Shitterton: The village that dare not speak its name
.....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/th ... 31420.html
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Fed-up residents of Shitterton club together for stone sign... to stop thieves taking rude trophies
By Luke Salkeld
Last updated at 1:55 AM on 23rd July 2010

It might have been easier to just change the name of their little hamlet.
Instead, however, the residents of Shitterton have had it set in stone.
Their decision comes after amused visitors to the community in Dorset repeatedly stole signs bearing its name.
They were wooden and far too easily removed by anyone wanting to take home a souvenir. Three had disappeared in a year.

Now thieves will have to work a good deal harder after some of Shitterton's 100 or so villagers clubbed together to pay for a stone sign cemented into the ground.
Ian Ventham, 62, who lives in Shitterton Farmhouse, said of the latest theft: 'We think it was kids who would like to have it stuck on the wall in a den somewhere because it's quite an interesting sign.
'I don't think it was malicious, they just did it for fun, but it was exasperating for us.'
He added: 'We would get a nice new shiny sign from the council and five minutes later, you'd turn your back and it was gone. Not having the signpost could make life difficult by confusing delivery drivers.
'We thought, "Let's put in a ton and a half of stone and see them try and take that away in the back of a Ford Fiesta".' 8)

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0uUvpySC4
 
In lancaster there is Golgotha Heights, which is near where they think public executions took place (they stopped them last year!). Also, in the centre there is a quaint alley called 'Bashful Alley'. the council changed its name a long time ago, because its original name was 'Swapcunt Alley'!!!
 
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My girlfriend drew my attention to this islet off the coast of Guangdong, near Hong Kong. In colloquial Cantonese 'Lai shi' means to lose control of one's bowels, therefore a fair translation might be 'Shit-Yourself Island'
 
James_H said:
z7DlRlo.png


My girlfriend drew my attention to this islet off the coast of Guangdong, near Hong Kong. In colloquial Cantonese 'Lai shi' means to lose control of one's bowels, therefore a fair translation might be 'Shit-Yourself Island'
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Beautiful. :D
 
James_H said:
z7DlRlo.png


My girlfriend drew my attention to this islet off the coast of Guangdong, near Hong Kong. In colloquial Cantonese 'Lai shi' means to lose control of one's bowels, therefore a fair translation might be 'Shit-Yourself Island'
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*hee hee* .. James said "dong" .. "hee hee*
 
Two suburbs of Basingstoke are Daneshill - where a battle in the 9th century was fought between Saxons and rampaging vikings, and Lychpit, a mass burial ground, where the casualties were interred. The latter comprises a huge modern housing estate. Sounds like material for a horror film, if those liches ever start to get restless.
Incidentally the precise location of the battle is traditionally said to be at the roundabout on Swing Swang Lane, swang being old English for marsh.
Must admit that Swing's marsh, full of liches that died a brutal death, doesn't strike me as the most congenial place on which to build homes.
 
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I don't know about 'macabre,' but back when I was in my early 20s I worked a summer doing some really rubbish telesales jobs. One of these was phoning up businesses who the client hadn't heard from in years, to see if they still wished to receive their free copy of the publication Industrial Exchange and Mart.

It was soul destroying work on several levels, tbh. Always reading off a script/ And that customer list was OLD. Many of the numbers I was calling were just Out of Service, time after time. Some where premises which had changed business sector entirely, others were small businesses where the owners had died and I was speaking to widows and ex-partners. All of whom my script forced me to hassle them with regards to whether they still wanted that free copy of Industrial Exchange and Mart.

The one that made me laugh though was a woman I was speaking to whose father owned the business. They wanted to keep receiving the publication but the address needed to be reconfirmed.

She's halfway through reeling off the address when the next line I hear from her is: "I love dogs".

I'm kinda struck for a moment.

'Sorry?'

'I love dogs'.

'Sorry madam, I didn't... catch that last part'.

'Jesus! I love dogs!'

'Well, I'm quite fond of them myself' I replied, 'but I do need to take an address off you...'

'What!?'

'Your address-'

'And I'm giving it to you! I LOVE DOGS!'

I took me another few minutes of back and forth before I got my head around the fact that
:

a) She was actually saying "Isle of Dogs" and that
b) That was a place in London. Which frankly outside of London very few people are likely to know about, unless they have had a similar experience.. :)
 
CuriousIdent said:
I don't know about 'macabre,' but back when I was in my early 20s I worked a summer doing some really rubbish telesales jobs. One of these was phoning up businesses who the client hadn't heard from in years, to see if they still wished to receive their free copy of the publication Industrial Exchange and Mart.

It was soul destroying work on several levels, tbh. Always reading off a script/ And that customer list was OLD. Many of the numbers I was calling were just Out of Service, time after time. Some where premises which had changed business sector entirely, others were small businesses where the owners had died and I was speaking to widows and ex-partners. All of whom my script forced me to hassle them with regards to whether they still wanted that free copy of Industrial Exchange and Mart.

The one that made me laugh though was a woman I was speaking to whose father owned the business. They wanted to keep receiving the publication but the address needed to be reconfirmed.

She's halfway through reeling off the address when the next line I hear from her is: "I love dogs".

I'm kinda struck for a moment.

'Sorry?'

'I love dogs'.

'Sorry madam, I didn't... catch that last part'.

'Jesus! I love dogs!'

'Well, I'm quite fond of them myself' I replied, 'but I do need to take an address off you...'

'What!?'

'Your address-'

'And I'm giving it to you! I LOVE DOGS!'

I took me another few minutes of back and forth before I got my head around the fact that
:

a) She was actually saying "Isle of Dogs" and that
b) That was a place in London. Which frankly outside of London very few people are likely to know about, unless they have had a similar experience.. :)
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:rollingw:Brilliant!

I once did a similar job, ringing rural businesses to ask if they'd like to apply for development funding. The poor buggers I did interest in the scheme had a world of complicated paperwork ahead of them so the 'dead number' ones were lucky!
 
Anonymous said:
I recently "learned" that a street near where I grew up, innocuously called Blagreaves Lane, was named after a corruption of the term "Black Graves", so named because it is built over the site of mass graves dug for victims of the black death. I say "learned" in inverted commas as it seems to be a fact that passed me by, and now all my friends from the area quote it as a Well Known Fact.
I was wondering if since this would be fairly common occurence in the Middle Ages whether anyone had come across this name themselves, could confirm this sounds reasonable, or tell of similar place names whose meaning has been corrupted over the years.
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Curious to see this old thread resurrected as, with a hat-tip to the original post, here's the pub I walked past on my lunch-time trudge today in Reading:

IMG_20171009_1241582.jpg
 
"She was actually saying "Isle of Dogs"

Just as well it wasn't Isle of the Dead, or she would have sounded like some morbid sicko.
 
On reading this thread (okay, I'm having a boring day...) I'm reminded of Berry Meadow in Exeter, where I grew up. Exeter, I mean, not the field. It's a park now, and we always thought it was called Berry after blackberries which might, one supposes, have grown there in more sylvain times. But at school we were told it was called Bury Meadow (never saw it written down) and it was where they put the cholera victims during Exeter's periodic plagues.

Anyone know if this is true?
 
Most entertaining thread! I was going to throw in the relatively local Catbrain Hill, but @Myrtlee beat me to it. I'm just as saddened by its painfully mundane meaning; my mind had such fun concocting suitably grotesque derivations. Ah, well. :p

Not too many other local names of note. There's Chaingate Lane, but that's most likely a reminder of the coal mining industry that once dominated the area (see also: Engine Common & Bagstone), not least since the remains of a colliery lie along it.

I'm intrigued about Winpenny Bridge just up the road, amused by Cowship Lane and its ever-defaced sign (no prizes for guessing to what it's altered) and shiver quietly at Endland's Farm, despite knowing it's likely just named for a prior denizen. Its ever more ruinous condition only serves to heighten its eerie feel...
 
Bigphoot2 said:
In Aberdeenshire there is a place called My Lord's Throat.
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While the city has the Gallowgate, named for exactly what you'd expect it to be. Glasgow has a Gallowgate too, probably a load of places do. I've always found Edinburghs Fleshmarket sinister, although it really isn't. Mind you, I also spend a significant amount of time laughing myself stupid over Cockburn Street (I know about the pronunciation, I choose to ignore it)!
 
I just found a place called 'World's End', near Peasemore in Berkshire.
David Cameron's from Peasemore...
 
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