Many district or unitary councils have names that immediately make sense to averagely well-informed natives – they are named after well known towns or cities (say, Doncaster or Middlesbrough) – but some can leave us guessing. Where is Shepway? Or Tendring? Or Bassetlaw? The first of those districts has recently taken steps to clarify matters… it has renamed itself Folkestone and Hythe. Most native Brits know Folkestone as a channel port, and as the place where the channel tunnel descends into the chalk connecting us to continental Europe. But why was the district ever called Shepway? Often these little known names are for districts which include several towns or centres of population, and where local politics would resist just one of them being prioritised by having the whole district named after it.
“Shepway” comes from the Anglo-Saxon period. A lathe was an ancient division of Kent and originated, probably in the 6th century, during the Jutish colonisation of the county. Angles, Saxons and Jutes colonised lowland Britain – what we would now think of as England – on the collapse of the Roman Empire. They were three Germanic groups originating in what we would now think of as northern Germany and Denmark (Jutland). Wikipedia tells us: “Etymologically, the word lathe may derive from a Germanic root meaning “land” or “landed possession”, possibly connected with the Greek word latron (“payment”). The lathe was an important administrative, judicial and taxation unit for 600 years after the Domesday Book.”
The current local authority district was formed as Shepway on 1 April 1974 by the merger of Folkestone, Hythe, Lydd and New Romney Boroughs along with Elham and Romney Marsh Rural Districts. “Shepway” would have seemed a reasonable compromise name, by drawing on a long historical pedigree that did not give undue prominence to any one of the previous councils. However, renaming the district as Folkestone and Hythe probably makes sense today.
Lathes were unique to Kent – suggesting (to me) that this organisation and terminology was associated with the Jutes. Other parts of the country had other forms of local administrative territories in the Anglo-Saxon period. The “hundred” was common in much of southern Britain.
I spend much of my time in Tendring district on the north Essex coast. Not many people will know where that is, but they may well have heard of the towns of Clacton-on-Sea, Frinton, or Harwich. As with Shepway, Tendring is a name which does not adjudicate which town is most important. It reverts to the name of the Saxon hundred of Tendring. The precise etymology of “hundred” is contested. It may once have referred to an area of 100 (or possibly 120) hides, though a “hide” is not a specific area: instead it was conceptually the amount of land required to support a family. Alternatively it may have been based on the area liable to provide 100 men under arms, or because it was an area originally settled by 100 men at arms. It has been suggested that this form of local organisation had been observed in Germany by Tacitus in the Roman period. Many districts in the south of England bearing names other than those of their principal town use the name of an old Hundred. Tendring being an example.
When the Vikings colonised the northern and eastern parts of Britain, they brought a similar form of local unit, but it was called a “wapentake”. The wapentake was the rough equivalent in the Danelaw of the Anglo-Saxon hundred. The word is possibly derived from a meeting place, usually at a crossroads or by a river, where one’s presence or vote was taken by the brandishing of weapons. According to some authorities, weapons were not brandished during a Norse assembly (known as a) but were allowed to be taken up again after the assembly had finished. It is also possible that it was just citizens who were entitled to possess weapons who were allowed to take part. Anyhow, Bassetlaw in north Nottinghamshire derives its name from the old wapentake, although most people would know the area better by reference to the names of one of its two principal towns, Worksop or Retford – two predecessor councils before the creation of the larger district.
Although some district names seem obscure there is usually a historical justification for them – often going back to the period between the collapse of the Roman empire and the arrival of the Normans in 1066. A little research can turn up some interesting information.
Demographic Insight 