THERE is no place for No Place in a new dictionary detailing the origins of place names in Britain.

The tiny settlement near Stanley, County Durham, which has one of the strangest names in the country, does not feature in the Penguin Dictionary of British Place Names, published today.

Author Adrian Room has scoured the country, tracking down explanations for places such as Barton in the Beans, in Leicestershire, which, apparently, translates into barley farm where beans are grown.

The book also reveals some people face the humiliating prospect of claiming Brown Willy or Pratt's Bottom as home.

And it must be hard to say you live in Wyre Piddle, Penistone or Queen Camel without provoking mirth from your listener.

Some of the more unlikely sounding entries in the region include North Yorkshire's Blubberhouses, which means houses by the bubbling spring, and Constable Burton, meaning fortified farmstead of the constable.

Also included are Muggleswick and Wackerfield, in County Durham, and Upper and Nether Poppleton, in North Yorkshire.

One of the largest entries is reserved for the settlement of Pity Me, near Durham, which has several possible explanations as to how it came to be named.

One explanation is that it derives from a semi-humorous term for a barren or desolate piece of land.

The dictionary has more than 1,000 entries and tells how John O'Groats was named after Jan de Groot, a 15th Century Dutch bailiff to the earls of Caithee.

In Yorkshire, Bugthorpe and Hipperholme nestle alongside villages with names such as Swine, Thwing and Ugglebarnby.

Devon has its fair share of interesting settlements, including the alluring Beer, Westward Ho! and, for money-makers, Pennycomequick - which means exactly that.

Manchester's well-known Moss Side was named because it was the edge of the mossy land.

Miserable people may seek solace in Old Sodbury, in Gloucestershire, but really the name translates as fortified place.

* For the record, there are a number of versions as to how No Place got its name. One is that it was originally called Near Place, and another that it sat on a boundary between two districts.