e, at any rate in a great part of England, the regular nucleus of
the village, which in some cases has become the great town and in
others has decayed away and disappeared from the map. In an age when
wool was our great export, flock keeping was naturally a most
important calling, and the ley, or meadow land, would be quickly taken
up and associated with human activity. When bridges were scarce,
fords were important, and it is easy to see how the inn, the smithy,
the cartwright's booth, etc., would naturally plant themselves at such
a spot and form the commencement of a hamlet.

ELEMENTS OF PLACE-NAMES

Each of these four words exists by itself as a specific place-name and
also as a surname. In fact Lee and Ford are among our commonest local
surnames. In the same way the local origin of such names as Clay and
Chalk may be specific as well as general. But I do not propose to
deal here with the vast subject of our English village names, but only
with the essential elements of which they are composed, elements which
were often used for surnominal purposes long before the spot itself
had developed into a village. [Footnote: A good general account of
our village names will be found in the Appendix to Isaac Taylor's
Names and their Histories. It is reprinted as chapter xi of the same
author's Words and Places (Everyman Library). See also Johnston's
Place-names of England and Wales, a glossary of selected names with a
comprehensive introduction. There are many modern books on the
village names of various counties, e.g. Bedfordshire, Berkshire,
Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Suffolk (Skeat),
Oxfordshire (Alexander), Lancashire (Wyld and Hirst), West Riding of
Yorkshire (Moorman), Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire
(Duignan), Nottinghamshire (Mutschmann), Gloucestershire (Baddeley),
Herefordshire (Bannister), Wiltshire (Elsblom), S.W. Yorkshire
(Goodall), Sussex (Roberts), Lancashire (Sephton), Derbyshire
(Walker), Northumberland and Durham (Mawer).] Thus the name Oakley
must generally have been borne by a man who lived on meadow land which
was surrounded or dotted with oak-trees. But I should be shy of
explaining a given village called Oakley in the same way, because the
student of place-names might be able to show from early records that
the place was originally an ey, or island, and that the first syllable
is the disguised name of a medieval churl. These four simple etymons
themselv