In Welsh or Celtic, ‘Llandin’, means “sacred eminence” and is the old name for Parliament Hill, the highest point 6 km north west of the City of London (known to the Romans as Londinium). So perhaps London took its name from the Celtic religious site. About 3 km to the south east of this hill is another promontory known as the Penton or “sacred mound on the head”. The latter site is on the top of Pentonville Road between present day Kings Cross and the Angel.
There is also the River Thames, a name acknowledged to be pre-¬Roman. Within South East London we too have a Pen at Penhill and it is also at the end of a Iow ridge. There may be other Celtic names in the area but they have been overlain by Roman, Saxon and Early English names. Below and west of the Iron Age hillfort by the Thames Barrier in what is now Maryon Wilson Park have been found iron age buildings, and possibly the original site of Charlton or ‘Ceorlton’ - “free peasants village”.
To protect the area from incursions from down river from the earliest times, the ‘ness’, the high headland at the east end of the ridge known as Lessness, has visibility a long distance towards the estuary. This ancient name for a headland is unusual in this part of Britain. Also around the edge of the promontory is a rampart and ditch suggesting a fortified settlement showing its antiquity. ¬
Other local high points with ‘ton’ and possible Romano-British connections are Keston, Crotton, also Upton near the Roman Watling Street, all near springs. Vicus was a name given to Romano-British settlements near or on old Roman roads. On the eastern slopes of Shooters Hill is an early settlement’ now called East Wickham, which straddles the ridge between the north draining into the River Thames, and the tributaries of the River Shuttle to the south. Corrupted over time to Wick and with the addition of the suffix ‘ham’ - “estate”, and the Roman ‘Streate’ indicating the near Roman road, Wickham Street, latterly East Wickham is probably the earliest known Anglo-Saxon settlement in the area.
There are many Anglo-Saxon names in South East London mainly in the river valleys of the Ravensbourne, Beck, Kidbrook, Quaggy, Darent, Cray, and Shuttle. Some of these names may be original celtic or pre-celtic, such as Beck, Quaggy, Darent and Cray.
There was once a heated debate over which suffix ‘ing’ or ‘ham’ was amongst the first village settlement names. As ‘ham’ is “estate” and ‘ing’ is “of the people” it is obvious that the single ‘ham’ must come before the plural ‘people’. Locally Lewisham and Beckenham in the valley and Eltham (Alteham). on the hill, surrounded by springs, show the early reliance on a good water supply. And these were closely followed by ‘ingham’ the “estates of the people”, Bellingham, Mottingham, Farningham and ‘ington’ the “villages of the people”, Dansington (now Danson) , Orpington, Wilmington, Addington. There are not many ‘ing’ villages in the area, Welling probably noting the springs around it being a late hamlet on the edge of three parishes. There were ‘hurst’ ¬places on the hill, Chesilhurst = stony hill, and Hurst on the hill opposite Penhill south of the River Shuttle.
There were places in the valleys where there was wide grazing land for animals and arable land for crops on the edge of the woods. These were the ‘lea’ lands as at Bexley, Bromley, Lee, Brockley and Ruxley with the village on the higher land..
And to protect these settlements towns were created at the lowest fordable points on the Rivers Ravensbourne. Darent. and Cray at Deptford, Dartford and Crayford respectively, the first two being King’s lands and all have their origins lost in the mists of time. When the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, 20 years after the Normans invaded, the compilers were only interested in the land that had been acquired by the Kings retainers and the Kent Volume is a good example of how the Archbishop, bishops and courtiers had spread themselves over the good farming land in the county. Many places are missing - who wants a village on a stony ridge (East Wickham) or hilltop (Chislehurst) or on the Darenth floodplain (Shoreham) or were these left to the Saxons. One has to remember that the winners write history, the losers hope to survive.
The names written down by the French scribes for each of the villages are their approximation to the sound of the name, i.e. Charlton = Cerletone, Keston = Cheston and Crofton = Croctune. But these Norman names might hide a hint of the origin, Charlton we know about, but Cheston must refer to the Roman fortification theory of the Iron Age Holwood hill known as Caesar’s Camp high on the bluff. As for Croctune, there is a Roman villa on top of the hill facing south east.
The Domesday Book and old maps hold a clue about Woolwich. On the River Thames up to 1965, there was part of Kent, North Woolwich on the north bank of the Thames opposite Woolwich. ‘Wich’ means port as in Fordwich and Greenwich. Woolwich owned by Hamo the Sheriff, who also leased Dartford from the King, was obviously the customs officer for London as ships passed through his land holding, basically two river frontages opposite each other, 65 acres in total, in the massive county tome. Recently found on the power station site fronting the river were probable Roman docks near the present ferry.
In Norman times there were many hundreds of acres of woodland in this area and in the weald. Most of the villages named in the Domesday Book are connected to water showing the settlement pattern. But there are many places, with stated Saxon churches not mentioned, such as there are many in the Kent listings that have not been located on the ground. Some places grow, evolve and vanish through emparking, civil wars, unproductive soil or lack of that vital bit of elbow grease needed to turn a few cogs, manual or non-manual.
Others have Royal connections, i.e. Eltham is spelt Alteham or high village. Does this relate to the early palace built there, whether it was a Saxon Royal Vill or purely that from the heights by the palace can be seen the City of London, therefore high village, Alteham.
There is a lot of history in place names but you have to know the history that created them, the geography that placed them, at that certain point where they still existed, before that great explosion called Greater London began to overwhelm them from 1850 onwards.
But it also happened much earlier too. In the West Riding of Yorkshire was a Saxon village with it’s parish boundaries on two rivers and a Roman road. Named Acworth on the earliest maps, its residents were on the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses and lost land and a few lives at the battle of Towton, just up the road, in 1461. The village is spelt correctly on John Speed’s map of Yorkshire, but once coal is found near the surface and new manorial owners are installed the place becomes Ackworth. It is a common mistake, even Samuel Pepys couldn’t resist writing about William Ackworth’s wife in Woolwich. . But there are three places named Acworth in the United States and as I know the family have spread around the world, there may be others I do not know about. People always name places after their family name or where they came from.
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