A new subject for this blog is the way in which the faeries are linked to the names the British have given to places in their landscape. Many of these date back to early medieval times (Anglo-Saxon) and indicate once more the very longstanding faery associations with the land.
Whilst quite a few of these names relate to prominent features like hills, streams and pools, many refer to much smaller, less significant and, even, transitory locations. A large proportion of these are field names- used in the past but highly vulnerable to changes of land-use; the consolidation of fields or their conversion to intensive arable have, over the last century, done away with the need to identify various small pastures, meadows and such like. Valuable place name evidence has therefore been lost.
Subtle landscape features were also labelled in the past by those intimately acquainted with the area they lived in and used, and these highly local names may also be forgotten over the generations: Poflet, in Devon, for example, describes a dip down to a stream which Puck frequented; in late Tudor times there was a Hop Gap at Methley in the West Riding of Yorkshire- a space in a fence where you might meet Hob. Such localised names are very vulnerable to being lost.
Faeries, pixies & elves
I’ll start by looking at the names including the element ‘fairy.’ These are, in fact, quite rare and are mostly of rather recent origin, the majority only apparently dating from Victorian times (making you suspect that the choice of the name could have been more literary or romantic than any reflection of local superstition). As readers may be aware, this late usage is probably to be expected in any event, in that ‘fairy’ is a word derived from French and a relative late comer to the English language. Confirmed fae origins may be found for Fairy Yard, a field at Ashton on Mersey in Cheshire, the Fairy Close and Hill at Wragby in West Yorkshire and Fairy Cross, at Trent in Dorset. As the English Place Name Survey remarks of these, they seem to denote places renowned for being haunted by faeries.
A lot of the apparent ‘fairy’ place-names actually come from other words such as ‘ferry’ or ‘fair.’ Too ready an interpretation without tracing back the name to its origins can often produce misleading results. The writer Jabez Allies, in his Roman and Saxon Antiquities and Folklore of Worcestershire, of 1856, was rather guilty of this. His pride in his home county and its rich traditions encouraged him to find faery names everywhere: he enumerated thirty parishes where there are places named after Puck, for instance, and another twenty-six in which the goblin Hob is commemorated. Sadly, modern scholarship is not so generous in its attributions.
Interestingly, names incorporating the element ‘pixie’ are equally rare. The rectory at Durweston in Dorset is recorded as being named Pexy’s Hole, the hollow haunted or frequented by pixies, in 1584. There are other examples, but these are first recorded at a later date. As with the more recent ‘fairy’ names, these suggest a conscious choice of label rather than a traditional significance.
Names that include the Anglo-Saxon aelf, ‘elf,’ are also surprisingly absent. We find that, in 1285, Eldon Hill in Derbyshire was recorded as Elvedon, the elves’ hill. Alfin Hall at Agbrigg in the West Riding of Yorkshire speaks for itself. The lost Alvehou at Tetney in Lincolnshire and Alveleg at Crich in Derbyshire were the elves’ mound and clearing respectively. The ‘alvysch thornys’- the ‘elves’ thorn trees’ are recorded in 1319 as a field name at Milton Abbas in Dorset. Perhaps the most interesting is Elva Hill, near to Setmurthy in Cumbria. In 1488 the place was called Elf How; it’s the site of a circle of fifteen stones, which were probably the retaining wall for a cairn or burial chamber.
Goblins
There is a sort of goblin now called the ‘shuck’ or ‘shock’ (from the Anglo-Saxon scucca) and its presence is marked in at least sixteen names, denoting woods, streams, hills and marshes, from the east of England up to Cheshire. Outliers include Shobrooke in Devon and Shucklow Warren in Buckinghamshire.
Hob is another good example of the potential pitfalls in ascribing faery origins, as many names are more likely to derive from the personal name Hobbe than from the supernatural being. Nonetheless, at least eighteen genuine ‘Hob’ names can be identified, concentrated in the north of England and often related to natural features, such as hills, fields and- in one case- stones, the Hobb Stones at Tankersley in South Yorkshire. Other names concentrated in the north of England are boggart and boggle, applied to fields and woods in West Yorkshire, Cheshire and Westmoreland. A particular boggart known in the north was ‘Old Skrat,’ and he is named in at least nine places, mainly woods and hills.
Puck
The other goblin name with clear Anglo-Saxon roots is ‘Puck,’ from the Old English puca. This name is the most common faery toponym in England, being found in at least fifty-three places, of which a third are in Gloucestershire and over seventy per cent in the South and South West of England. About a quarter of these names are associated with pits or holes, alongside a scatter of hills, streams, pools, moors and woods.
What’s especially interesting to me is how certain names are noticeably linked to human structures. Eleven per cent of the ‘hob’ place-names are linked with houses and farms; 22% are lanes. In the case of ‘puck’ place-names, the figures break down as follows: 17% applied to buildings (examples include Puckscroft in Surrey and Puckrup and Puckham, both in Gloucestershire) and 17% to roadways, paths and so on (for instance, Puckstye, Sussex, Puckpath, Gloucestershire, Pockford, Surrey and, in Warwickshire, Powke Lane and Poukelone). Whilst it’s fairly easy to imagine that a certain lane might get its name because it was a lonely, dark place where you might run into a goblin at night, the dwellings, barns and sheds named after him are much less expected.
Although we have relatively few boggle and boggart names, 12% of these apply to roads and 12% too to houses. This is especially interesting, as there is a strong tradition in West Yorkshire of ‘boggart houses,’ buildings that are renowned for being haunted by a spirit. The reasons for so many places like Pit House, in Dorset (Puck House originally), Hob Cote in Keighley and Puck Shipton (Puck’s sheep shed) in Wiltshire seem to be twofold: either they were specifically inhabited by such a spirit or they had been built on a spot that was already very strongly associated with sightings of one of the goblins. Either way, it’s remarkable evidence of people living alongside their Good Neighbours over hundreds and hundreds of years.
Summary
Overall, faery derived names are scattered quite evenly across England. They primarily (but not exclusively) relate to landscape features and give us an impression of a land as widely settled by the Good Folk as by humans. Our Good Neighbours were just that- living in the countryside in close proximity to their mortal kin- and sometimes residing far more familiarly than that, sharing a house or co-habiting in a farm.
This posting is adapted from part of a chapter in my new book, The Spirits of the Land- Faeries and the Soul of Britain (2022)- available as a paperback and e-book through Amazon.
British Fairies 
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