Barking, but Brill?

LAST week’s column chronicled a week’s Rail Roving around north-west England.

Happily, many people enjoyed it. “An absolute delight,”

wrote Ian Andrew from Lanchester, who’d been walking in west Cumbria – his wife as back-up party – the same week.

Still sitting back and thinking of England, we dined last Friday at the Cross Keys in Esh, west of Durham, and fell to wondering how many other places on these shores have just three letters in their name. More of that in next week’s Eating Owt column.

It led, incorrigibly, to a search of the road atlas index and, driven to distraction, far more hours than may be advisable or easily accommodated.

After the north-west passage, there follows a Round Britain Tour.

IN the highly improbable event of my ever writing a book, it will be called Flowery Field for Ever. Flowery Field is a railway station between Manchester and Glossop, litterstrewn when last I passed.

Other stations have seductive names like Rose Grove, on an industrial estate in Burnley, and Daisy Hill, in a featureless part of Lancashire.

If there’s anywhere really getting a bit over its station, however, it may be the Glamorgan hamlet known as City. The smallest place of all, of course, is Lilliput. As Jonathan Swift readers well know, it’s in Dorset. Biggar’s bigger.

It doesn’t even need the A–Z to know that Wrose is a suburb of Bradford – different spelling, but you know what they say about a rose by any other name – or that, nearby, lies Idle.

There really is an Idle Workmen’s Club, so savvy that they energetically sell T-shirts and other souvenirs.

There really is a Kentish village called Loose, too, though whether there’s a Loose Women’s Institute – of popular belief – it is impossible to say.

AFOOTBALL team chosen from the map of England would be captained by our old friend Billy Row, which is near Crook, and certainly include Percy Main (North Tyneside) and Patrick Brompton, near Bedale.

The rest of the county team might be Bryn Gates (Wigan), Charles Tye (Suffolk), David Street (Kent), Douglas West (Isle of Man), Edmond Castle (Cumbria), Elton Green (Cheshire) and his brother George Green (Bucks), Harold Hill (London).

Subs: Hugh Town (Isle of Sheppey), Chester Moor (Co Durham).

In the interests of equality, of course, there’d have to be a women’s XI, too.

Catherine Slack (Bradford), Edith Weston (Rutland), Gay Bowers (Essex), Hayley Green (Dudley), Hazel Grove (Stockport), Ivy Todd (Norfolk), Kelly Bray (Cornwall), Lady Hall (Cumbria), Lindsey Tye (Suffolk), Margaret Marsh (Dorset) and Lucy Cross, which painful memory recalls is half-way across the Lyke Wake Walk. The famous Mavis Enderby (Lincs) could be sub. Bag Enderby can be the physio.

Matches might be held at Playing Place (Cornwall); those on a losing streak should head for Winless, in the Highlands. Other events will be staged at Bowling Green (Worcestershire) and Cricket St Thomas (Somerset). There’s a Compton Dando and a Compton Durville but Compton Denis seems, sadly, to be off the map.

THERE are several Bows and, in Warwickshire, an Arrow.

There are two Quarters but no Half, four Weeks but no Days, an Insh and a Mile End. There’s a Dog Village in Devon and a Donkey Town in Surrey, a Bunny in Nottinghamshire and a Burrow in Lancs.

There’s a Constable Burton near Bedale, a Constable Lee in Lancashire and a Cop Street in Kent, but a Brawl in the Highlands, and both a Bicker and a Wrangle in Lincolnshire.

Bow Street’s in Wales, Clink in Somerset, Cropper in Derbyshire.

Foul End, Worcestershire, may serve them right.

Broad church, there’s a Canon Frome in Hertfordshire, an Archdeacon Newton near Darlington, a Dean Bottom in Kent and a veritable house of Bishops. Lent is in Buckinghamshire, a year-round observance.

Other places are an estate agent’s dream. Who could resist living in Brill – options in both Buckinghamshire and Cornwall – or Flash (Staffordshire) or Plush, where doubtless the Dorset gentry reside.

Dull, in Perthshire, and Bleak Street in Somerset may best be avoided and besides, the refulgent Shiney Row is very much closer to home.

DOUBTLESS it’s a result of so much reading, but there do seem to be rather a lot of place names suggestive of mental disorder – most famously, of course, Crackpot in the North Yorkshire dales near Reeth. Crazies Hill, similarly disoriented, is in Kent and Crank in Jersey. Babel’s in Flintshire. There may not be a tower.

Bedlam, says the A–Z, is in North Yorkshire. Does it mean Beadlam?

Those with depressive illnesses should probably steer clear of Black Dog, in Devon, though Daffy Green (Norfolk) has only mild symptoms.

Then, of course, there’s Barking.

Those simply feeling a bit under the weather might head for Pale (Gwynned) or Giddy Green which, like Droop, is in Dorset. If things deteriorate, Ashen’s in Essex. Crock Street (Somerset) may have more than its share of disability; Hale – there are six of those – or Healing (Lincs) should help.

ANY amount of places may be named after pubs, from Saracens Head to Craven Arms. At least two villages are simply called Beer – there’s a Brewer’s End, too – but there’s only one Booze, and that’s famously up in Arkengarthdale, too.

Near Crackpot, in fact. Dry Street (Somerset) may redress the balance.

ON a more global scale, America – never been – is in Cambridgeshire, Canada in Hampshire, Ireland in Bedfordshire and Scotland, as everyone knows, in Lincolnshire.

Jerusalem and Gibraltar are in Lincolnshire, too, Nazareth’s in Wales and Prussia Cove – like No Man’s Land – is in Cornwall.

There appears not to be a Russia, save where it might reasonably be expected, but Ruskie’s in Stirlingshire (and not everywhere, as previously was supposed.) At least four places, inexplicably, are called World’s End. Nigh, there’s a fifth just out of Thirsk. If it hasn’t fallen off, or the sign been pinched, it should be there still.

SOME place names may leave little to the imagination.

There’s a Dirt Pot in Northumberland and a Pluck’s Gutter and a Mud Row in Kent, a Pothole in Cornwall and a Fishpond Bottom in Dorset. A Cheshire village is simply called Rows of Trees.

Lovesome Hill is a hamlet of eight houses and a village hall between Darlington and Northallerton, while Hearts Delight is in Kent. Is that the most appealing place name in Britain?

BRITAIN has at least 50 places with three-letter place names. Eight of them are Ash. There’s only one, however, with just two letters – Ae, a village of 200 people north of Dumfries.

Established by the Forestry Commission in 1947, Ae is in the middle of a conifer forest and is, in turn, close to the Water of Ae.

Hitherto, the only known reference to “ae” had been in The Broons – in the Sunday Post since 1936 – where the identical twins are simply referred to as “ae twin” and “ither twin.”

Though one is said to be called Eck – short for Alexander and thus not to be confused with Wee Eck, who’s one of Oor Wullie’s mates – the twins, like Paw and several others of the Broon family, remain strictly anonymous.