Names are important. To speak about something, we really need a name for it. Without a name, something doesn't really exist. The existence of a name tells you that a place is important enough to be spoken of, differentiated. So an exploration of the place names of the village gives an insight into the life of the village. While doing my historical research I have been fascinated to learn the names by which places - farms, fields, landmarks, roads - were known. The range of place names we have for our village these days is quite small, because few of us have intimate knowledge of the land - the kind of knowledge which comes from working on it. So I am keen to record these old names and thereby fray a passage into that old world which has now been lost.
In the past, names were functional. A field, a farm or a house were given practical names. The most common was the name of the owner, or tenant, or farmer. So we had Tunwells Close, Wollards Close, Grain's Farm and Funston's Farm. Alternatively, the name might tell you the purpose of the thing named. And so we had Shelford Brewery and Malting, the Clay Pit, the Clunch Pit, the Tenter Close, the Butts and Stonehill. It might also be descriptive - White Hill, Sloes Close, the Spring Head Close or the Seven Acres. Roads were largely named for where they went, or what was in them - Cherryhinton Road or Mill Lane. When the High Street was the only road, they just called it The Street.
Names weren't fixed. They arose spontaneously, and they conveyed information. They changed freely, and there was no reason why something shouldn't be called different things by different people. Naming was an oral process, and names were transmitted orally. The process of giving a place a name - by intention - in commemoration of people, or to honour people - like the Elizabeth Line or the Davey Field - is a very modern one. Even more modern is the choice of names which create ambience, and which are designed for marketing. New housing developments are called Strawberry Fields, Cherry Trees or Almond Close, to give people the illusion that they are living in an idyllic rural setting.
It is as well to remember that names can be deceptive - witness Cantelupe Farm which is off the road between Trumpington and Grantchester. An unusual name. Surely, I thought, they didn't grow cantelupe melons? Well, they most certainly didn't. The farm's name conformed absolutely to the rules I mentioned above. It took its name from a 19th century aristocrat and local landowner, Viscount Cantelupe, son of Earl de la Warr. Who'd have thought it!
This Book of Names began with a map. It’s a map that doesn’t yet exist: it's the one I wanted to draw, of my village of Great Shelford. It was this map that made me think about names and landmarks.
The landmarks we have today are the main roads, the river, the bridges over the river and railway, the village hall and library, the doctors’ surgery and the shops. And it struck me that almost all our current landmarks are strung along the roads. And as a consequence, they’re all neatly ticketed and labelled, with addresses and postcodes. But it wasn’t always so. Until the late 1800s this was really quite a small village, and you could rely on the fact that everyone knew - or could at least describe - where everything was. And as long as this was an agricultural village, people were not just confined to the roads, but moved constantly between the village centre and the fields. It was as important then, as it is now, to be able to identify places, and so I found there was a rich seam of names to mine, out in the fields, on the arable, the pasture and the meadow. And that is where The Little Book of Names comes in.
I started to compile a Glossary of Place Names. I went through every document I could find, past and present, and began to list the names. Soon it had run into 87 pages, and it became an object of fascination, telling me all sorts of things about the village. I thought they might be as interesting to you as they are to me, so here is Great Shelford: A Little Book of Names.
Read next: Maps
v1 © Helen Harwood, uploaded March 2025