The Place-Names of England are a legacy bequeathed jointly by the five races who have successively invaded our shores - Celts, Romans, English, Danes, and Normans. The Latin and Norm. contributions were small; those of the other three races vary in extent from district to district.

 

As might be expected, Celtic names are most frequently met with in W. and NW. England, where the Britons resisted in such good effect that the English penetration made little headway; Danish names abound in the northern and midland counties which were once within the Danelaw, whilst elsewhere, particularly in the SE., English names predominate. Sussex place-names are almost entirely of English origin.

 

The old fair at Horsham

 

From our knowledge of the early history of the county we should not expect any Danish nor many Celtic names. In point of fact, the Celtic names are extremely few, and those are mainly names of rivers - Tarent (now the Arun), Medway, Lavant, and Limen (now the Eastern Rother). In the neighbouring county of Hampshire, on the other hand, there is a fair sprinkling of Celtic names, and even in Kent there are several.

 

We know from the Chronicles that the settlement of Sussex, under the traditional leaders Ælle, and his sons Wlencing, Cissa, and Cymen, was a separate movement from those which ultimately gave rise to the kingdoms of Wessex and Kent, and although we must not press the place-name evidence too far, the absence of Celtic names suggests that the settlement of Sussex was so efficiently carried out that before it the Celts disappeared.

 

It is difficult to know how much importance should be attached to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 490:'This year Ælle and Cissa besieged the city of Andred (i.e. Pevensey) and slew all that were therein; nor was one Briton left there afterwards', but perhaps we are right in thinking that the chronicler was not indulging in gross over-statement, and that elsewhere in the county many of the Celts met a like fate.

 

However the almost complete absence of Celtic names is to be explained, it remains one of the features that distinguish the place-nomenclature of the county of Sussex from those of its neighbours. Another distinguishing feature is the number of place-names containing personal names which are not found outside the county.

 

The conclusion seems justified that not only was the settlement of Sussex the result of a separate movement, but also that there was little intercourse during the Dark Ages between Sussex and the adjacent kingdoms. Additional evidence for the soundness of this conclusion is the large proportion of place-names in which are preserved words peculiar to the dialect of the South Saxons.

 

Perhaps nothing illustrates more strikingly the isolation of the Kingdom of Sussex than the fact that it was not until eighty-five years after St. Augustine had landed at Ebbsfleet that Christianity reached the heathen South Saxons, and even then it arrived not directly by way of Canterbury but through Wilfrid, Bishop of the Northumbrians, who dwelt in Sussex during one of his periods of exile from his own see.

 

The modern map gives no clue to the isolation of Sussex; the clue is provided by that dark, inhospitable, and dangerous forest, the Andredsweald, which proved an effectual barrier to cut off Sussex from her neighbours.

Its many place-names of archaic form point to the fact that the settlement of Sussex by the English began at an early date-according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 477, although since the record was not made until many years after the event we cannot place any reliance on this date-and an early settlement is indeed what we might expect in view of the county's long sea-board, offering many good landing-places and exposed to attack by marauders sailing westward down the Channel.

 

Place-names help us to reconstruct some idea of the way in which the settlement progressed. If the names of places ending in -ing(s) are marked on the map, it will be noticed that most of them fall into one of three groups:

 

(1) in the E. of the county, around Hastings;

 

(2) the largest group, between the Arun and the Adur, and on the Downs stretching away to the E. of the Adur; and

 

(3) around Chichester. Now it is usually accepted that place-names ending in -ing(s), the first element being a tribal or personal name, are evidence of the earliest type of English settlement.

 

It seems fairly safe to assume that these were the three districts of primary settlement, and probably it is not going too far to think that here we have evidence for the theory that the later Kingdom of the South Saxons came into being through the fusion of three separate though cognate tribes of invaders. This view receives support from the acknowledged fact that at a much later date the men of the Hastings district were for some purposes regarded as independent of the Kingdom of Sussex.

 

Names ending in -ham are typical of the second phase of the settlement. They are found farther inland than the -ing names, but tend for the most part to be near river valleys, the main routes by which the settlers penetrated to the hinterland. The -tons, which probably belong to the same period, are clustered thickly on the Downs between Lewes and Beachy Head, and in the south-western part of the county.

 

On the other hand, the -hursts, -dens, and -leys-all names which denote some connexion with woodland-are found far inland, distributed without relation to such geographical features as river valleys. These, in fact, were the latest settlements to be formed, some of them dating from a period not much earlier than the Norman Conquest, when the more easily cultivated sites had already been appropriated, and new settlers, or emigrants from older settlements, had to take to the forests to carve out lands of their own.

 

By the time that the settlement was completed, Sussex possessed a large number of villages and hamlets, and what must have been, according to the standards of those days, a dense population.

 

Certain elements in Sussex place-names are met with time and time again, and it is hoped the following list of suffixes will be of interest.

 

 

borough	bury, is sometimes derived from OE. burh (dative sing, byrig), a fortified place, and sometimes from OE. beorg, a hill, hillock, or grave-mound. The two words have become much confused.
bourne	(OE. burna), a stream.
combe	(OE. cumb), a valley. It had a less restricted meaning than Mod. Eng. coomb.
den	(OE. denu), a woodland pasture; often difficult to distinguish from
dean	(OE. denu), a valley.
ey	(OE. eg, leg), an island; used both of an island proper, and of a higher piece of land surrounded by marshes.
field	(OE. feld), an open piece of land. The meaning is that of Dutch veldt, not of Mod. Eng. field, which usually denotes an enclosed plot.
ham	used in two senses: (1) a homestead, manor, or village (OE. ham); (2) a piece of pasture-land, especially a river meadow (OE. hamm). There has been much confusion between the two words, and it is often difficult to decide with which we have to deal.
hurst	(OE. hyrst), a copse or wood.
ing	a frequently occurring suffix, of which there are several sources. The most common source is OE. -ingas, added (1) to a personal name, or (2) more rarely to a river name, or some other element. In (1) the meaning is 'The descendants, or people of...'; in (2) 'the dwellers at...
leigh, -ley	(OE. [eah), an open space in a wood; a natural open space rather than an artificial clearing.
mer(e)	(OE. mere), a pool or lake.
ste(a)d	(OE. stede), a place or site.
t on	(OE. tan), an enclosure, farm, homestead, or village. The primary sense is an enclosure; the extension of the meaning to include a village or town is a later development.
wich, -wick	(OE. wic), a dwelling-place, farm (especially a dairy-farm), or village.
worth	(OE. worð), an enclosure or homestead. OE. worð may have indicated a smaller homestead than ham or tun.

 

 

 

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