Bourne Archive: BAEM: Dyke

http://boar.org.uk/ghiwxs7BAEM(pic5.htm                      Latest edit 6 Feb 2011.  

Text, page and picture ©R.J.PENHEY 2008.  

Bourne Archive

The Area around Dyke, from the Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825.

This is a detail, covering the general area of the Dyke part of Bourne Parish, taken from the Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825.

Dyke seems to have been named from the important, artificial, fen-edge feature, the Car Dyke.

Wath Field will have been named after the wath, which was the ford across the Car Dyke at the field’s western end. The crossing is now made by the Wath Bridge. The word ‘wath’ is a form of the word ‘wade’ (OED) .

The name, Dyke Haws, to the south of Wath Field, means Dyke Enclosures (OED haw, n.1). Haw is fundamentally, the same word as Heg. It occurs most commonly as part of the word ‘hawthorn’; that is, hedge thorn. The name, together with the small size and irregular shapes of the fields here, implies early enclosure; before the 1766 Act of Parliament.

Moor field probably obtained its name from a moor similar to the one by which the adjacent parish of Morton was named. Except in place names, the lowland moors of England are now forgotten, having been drained, treated with lime in some form and turned over to pasture or agriculture but they were fundamentally the same as those of the uplands. A moor consists of acidic humus-rich soil. It is the acidic nature of the soil and the different flora it engenders, which differentiate a moor from the chemically basic humus of a fen. The humus differentiates it from the acidic mineral soil of a heath.

Over the hundreds of years since the lowland moors were lost, precision in use of the terminology has gone too. Added to this, bog, a word drawn from the Irish language, is now used as the technical term, instead of the Germanic word, moor. However, when using place names as a guide to the former ecology of an area, we need to be attuned to the language in use when the names were given.

The terrier dealing with a purchase made by Robert Hardwick mentions both ‘The Moor’ in or adjacent to Moor field and ‘Hurn More’.

The meaning of ‘Nutto’ is not so clear.

Links to: detail of :– the Main Street area: The Heg: Dyke Haws: Dyke Meadows: Dyke Fen

For the pre-enclosure open fields:– Moor Field: Nutto Field: Wath Field.

Most of the landowners’ names can be found in the 1817 Land Tax Assessment.

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