Off the wall?

In the region that boasts Crackpot and Kettlesing Bottom, Pity Me, Foggy Furze and Morton Tinmouth, it was a contender for oddest of all.

Harold Heslop had been equally intrigued, drove along the byroad and was disappointed. “We expected at least a hamlet, all we found was a farm,” he writes.

The North-East place names website, largely compiled by David Simpson – familiar among these pages, and if there’s anyone who knows his place it’s David – suggests that the region was once peopled by Ancient Britons whose language closely resembled modern Welsh.

In time they were harried southwestward by the Anglo-Saxons, who referred to the Brits as Wallish or “Welsh”, meaning foreign. Many settled in what now is Wales – though some, says the website, were brave enough to stay put. Hence, it’s supposed, Wallish Walls.

Some of the Welsh, indeed, were brave enough to return to the North- East and marry Shildon lads – but that’s another story.

www.northeastengland@talktalk.net ESSENTIAL if sometimes conjectural reading, the website offers an explanation for many of the region’s most puzzling place names.

Some are fairly obvious. Evenwood was simply on the level – then as now, no doubt – Fishburn a good place to catch supper, Loftus (honest) a house with a loft and Byers Green a place where cows might safely graze.

Others are more surprising. Great Fryup, near Whitby, was simply a valley belonging to Freya and should on no account be confused with Great Cockup, which is in Cumbria and where was a large cockerel ruled the roost.

Pity Me, near Durham, may yet have been the location of a small lake however Frenchified.

David supposes to be a little fanciful the legend that the monks carrying Cuthbert’s coffin were so clumsy that the great northern saint temporarily roused himself to urge them, as it were, to gan canny.

A few still puzzle him. What of Deaf Hill, near Trimdon, Twice Brewed and its neighbour Once Brewed on the Roman Wall, or Quaking Houses near Stanley – though the former proximity of Quaker House pit may have something to do with that one.

The clearly visible folk of No Place, also near Stanley, were so outraged when the signs were changed to Co-operative Villas that the council had to reinstate them – No Place and proud of it.

Among the most intriguing is the abundance of “foreign” names – places like Bloemfontein, Inkerman (near Tow Law), New York (North Shields), California (Witton Park and elsewhere), Canada (Chester-le- Street) and Quebec.

Quebec, between Durham and Consett, is said to have been named when its fields were enclosed in 1759, the year that General Wolfe captured Quebec from Canada.

Many similar rural place names simply indicate a considerable distance from the home farm. “With imagination,”

says the website, “it is possible to travel the world without ever leaving the North-East.”

IN Kirkby Stephen, which doubtless means a place with a church once owned by some feller called Steve, the Stainmore Railway Company is pushing on with the restoration of the old “East” station – the one on the Darlington to Penrith line – into an operational heritage centre, based on the 1950s. Among the latest initiatives is a 200 Club – first and third prizes in the inaugural draw won by Mike Thompson from Sedgefield, who just happens to be company chairman. Sue Jones, his partner, is secretary. “In the interests of harmony and of getting out of the meeting alive, I have reinvested my winnings in the company,” he says.

THEN there’s the curiously named village of Idle, near Bradford, home of the Idle Workingmen’s Club and its enthusiastic, worldwide, membership. Only this week the Quaker Coffee House in Darlington – no less curious, since it’s a pub – is offering both Idle Sod (though the Idle Brewery is near Doncaster) and Idle Landlord. Worse, a specially designed clip bearing the image of Quaker licensee Steve Metcalfe has now mysteriously appeared on the Landlord pump. Steve, at the time of our working visit, had yet to see it. Resting between engagements, no doubt.

WE all make mistakes, of course, which is probably why the BBC Tees website has been carrying an image of what’s claimed to be the Rocket and speaking of its historic impact on passenger transport. History suggests it’s actually Locomotion No 1.

Gordon Best in Darlington has pointed out those crossed lines both to the BBC and to the column, though we had some difficulty in tracking the exact page.

This may be because what the BBC calls “arguably the most famous railway in the world” is sufficiently obscure for them wrongly to have headlined it.

It’s the Stockton and Darlington, fellers. The Darlington and Stockton is a weekly newspaper near here.

STILL the right side of the tracks, we spent the weekend in the Peak District, where – as in Co Durham – former railway lines have been converted into attractive walks. The only difference is that in Derbyshire they’re actually used, far more thronging the route from Monsal Head to Bakewell then ever did in the days of the Midland Railway.

This may be because, in Derbyshire, the signs point to “Off-road pedestrian routes”, a term clearly understood by the average upwardly-mobile walker. In dear old Co Durham the council still calls them paths.

…and finally, the place names website makes a rare detour simply to address Annapurna – “a peculiar farm name between Crook and Willington, fancifully taken from a Nepalese mountain.”

Memory suggests that we’ve written of that one before. The archive insists otherwise.

Summit and nowt, but so that the mountain may finally come to Mohammed, can anyone explain it?

We’re back in the usual place next week.