Blencogo
Blencogo | |
Cumberland | |
---|---|
The New Inn public house, Blencogo | |
Location | |
Grid reference: | NY195478 |
Location: | 54°49’8"N, 3°15’7"W |
Data | |
Post town: | Wigton |
Postcode: | CA7 |
Dialling code: | 01697 |
Local Government | |
Council: | Cumberland |
Parliamentary constituency: |
Workington |
Blencogo is a small farming village near Wigton in north-western Cumberland. It stands on the Solway Plain that runs down to the Solway Firth, off the B3502 Wigton to Silloth road. The village is a centre for growing osier willow for basketmaking and related crafts.
Name
The village's unusual name may derive from the ancient Cumbric language, comparable with the Welsh blaen for 'top' and cog for 'cuckoo', to which was later added the Old Norse haugr meaning 'hill'[1] Altrnatively the suffix may simply be the Cumbric plural inflexion seen today in the Welsh suffix -au and Breton -ou.[2] Thus "Cuckoos' Hill".
History
Blencogo first appears in writing around 1100 when the Lord Waltheof of Allerdale granted the barony of Blencogo to Odard de Logis.[3] Numerous land transfers are made to Holme Cultram Abbey in over the next 150 years.[4] Land transfers and grants for Blencogo also appear in the patent and charter rolls for Kings Edward III (1342), Richard II (1388), Henry IV (1399), Henry VI (1426), Edward IV (1474), and Henry VII (1543).
Outside links
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Blencogo) |
References
- ↑ Ekwall, Eilert (1922). The place-names of Lancashire. Manchester: Chetham Society.
- ↑ Armstrong, A. M.; Mawer, A.; Stenton, F. M.; Dickens, B. (1950). The place-names of Cumberland. English Place-Name Society, vol.xx. Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 122.
- ↑ Ritson, Joseph. Annals of the Caledonians, Picts, and Scots; and of Strathclyde, Cumberland, Galloway, and Murray, Volume the Second. Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Company, 1828. 235.
- ↑ Grainger, Francis & William Gershom Collingwood. The Register and Records of Holm Cultram. London: T. Wilson & Sons, 1929.