Bourne Archive:
BAEM: The Heg
http://boar.org.uk/ghiwxs7BAEM(pic5Heg.htm Latest edit 1 Jan
2011.
Text, page
and picture ©R.J.PENHEY 2008.
The Bourne Archive Gallery
The Heg at Dyke, from the Bourne
Abbots Estate Map of 1825.
This is a detail, covering the area of the Heg, south of
Dyke, taken from the Bourne Abbots
Estate Map of 1825.
Car Dyke
The Heg
is a strip-shaped plot of land bounded by outer limits of the raised lateral
banks of the Car Dyke,
which perhaps as a result of the plot’s existence, have been conserved
particularly well here. The Exeter
Estate Book gives its area as 6 acres, 2 roods, 31 perches (2.7170 ha) and
confirms that its owner was Henry Bott, copyhold of
the Manor of Bourne. It does not give the plot’s name on the relevant plan but
it is included in the form ‘The Hegg’, in the EEB
list of premises. There is a similar strip plot along the Car Dyke north of
Dyke but this belonged to neither the Exeter Estate nor the Bourne Abbots
Estate. In the 1820s, it was held, apparently freehold, by John Brittain so, while the records of both the big estates
record his ownership, neither names the plot. (See John Brittain’s
plot straddling the Car Dyke and adjoining the Wath Field.)
Dyke Haws
Parts of
the Car Dyke act today, as a catchwater drain. The sections draining from north
and south into Bourne are clear cases in point but it may be illuminating if we
hypothesize that the Car Dyke was cut primarily as a security fence controlling
movement into and particularly of goods, out of a Roman imperial estate in the
fens.
It seems possible that the names Car and Heg have the same meaning but
with origins in the Brythonic and Germanic language
families respectively. Compare the modern Welsh caer (a fort), lle caeëdig (an
enclosure) and cae
(a field) or the English hedge,
respectively. Each of these words embraces the concept of an enclosing boundary
(Geiriadur
Newydd & OED). Two of the three Anglo-Saxon words for ‘hedge’,
given by Pollington are haga and hega but his
words for concepts such as ‘enclosure’, ‘boundary’ and ‘fencing’ are distinctly
different. However, the St. John’s College Forest site glossary of medieval land
use terms, under hay, gives the
Old English meaning of haga
as ‘enclosure generally’.
The
‘hay’ form of ‘heg’ is easily explicable.
Car Dyke
This
district underwent considerable Danish influence under the Danelaw.
The modern Danish word for fence is hegn. When heg is pronounced in the Danish manner, it sounds as hey, which is very close ‘hay’ and to
the French haie.
La haie normally
means ‘the hedge’ but in place names it seems also to be ‘the enclosure’:
compare La Haye Sainte at Waterloo. La Haye is the French version of the Dutch s’Gravenhage.
This in turn, means ‘the count’s park’.
A park is an enclosure: compare Gobold’s Park,
a pre-eighteenth century enclosure in Bourne Fen, or the general term, ‘
The other Brythonic
languages, Cornish and Breton are more influenced than Welsh is by the
languages of their neighbours but ‘to fence in’ can
be expressed in Breton, as kaea or kêa (Garnier: enclore), kael may be a fence, wall, railings or
hedge, depending on the material used (Garnier: kae &
Collins: clôture) and the act of enclosing may be kaea or kaela, while he
who does the enclosing is kaeour (Garnier: clôturer). In Cornish, ‘to enclose’ is keas (Morton Nance:
enclose) and the noun
‘hedge’ is ke
(Morton Nance: hedge). Thus even where the vocabulary
of these languages is in the Brythonic pattern they
both, the Cornish particularly, offer less clear support for the hypothesis
than Welsh does. Nonetheless, they do offer some.
The application of the car and heg names to the archaeological feature, the Car Dyke would
imply that their use is old: dating from a time when the dyke’s significance as
a boundary of a Roman imperial estate in The Fens was still remembered.
That this part of it serves also as a catchwater drain would seem to have been
regarded as of lesser significance when names were allocated.
Given the correctness of the enclosure line of argument as
an explanation of the Car and Heg names, the Brythonic name can hardly refer to anything much later than
the Roman use of the dyke. On the other hand, the use of ‘heg’
may arise from a translation of ‘car’ when Anglian settlers spread their
influence into the area from the north, in the fifth or sixth century but it
may refer to the dyke’s twelfth century use under Henry I, as the
western boundary of his royal
forest. See a brief description of the forest’s boundaries,
from the Parliamentary Gazetteer of 1841 and a map of Kesteven
Forest, from the forest research of St.
John’s College.
Other details from the
Bourne Abbots Estate Map: a general
view of Dyke: the Main
Street area: Dyke
Fen: Dyke Meadows:
Dyke Haws.
For the pre-enclosure open
fields, see Moor Field:
Nutto
Field: Wath Field
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