Hello Steven,
I'm sure there'll be loads of replies to this. Reins names are usually
taken to be from Old Norse: rein(n) 'a boundary strip'. It often
survives in names as rein(s), rean(s) or ran from a hypothesised Old
English form. It is frequently found in field names in the north and
also in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.
This is a very potted versions. Try the EPNS volumes on Warwickshire,
Westmorland and the Place-name elements.
Cheers
Linda
In message <[log in to unmask]>, Steven Bassett
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>I'd be most grateful for any advice on the following that members
>can provide.
>
>In the west Warwickshire parish of Ullenhall, which is on the
>southern edge of the Birmingham Plateau and of the 'Arden'
>district, seven instances of a field name in Reins (eg Reins Close,
>Ramshill Reins, Reddings Reins) are recorded in the early
>nineteenth-century tithe apportionment. They're spread around the
>parish, with several of them lying close to existing woods of some
>antiquity. The earliest references so far found to these Ullenhall
>names are early seventeenth-century.
>
>Sarah Wager, author of Woods, Wolds and Groves, has told me of
>an instance in the adjacent parish of Morton Bagot (small strips of
>woodland known as Little Reins), and of one in Sambourne, a few
>miles to the west (Sambourne Reins, 'which seems to be attached
>to some of the little coppices near Sambourne Heath'), and says
>that she knows of no others in Warwickshire.
>
>Can anyone throw any light on this word's etymology, please?
>
>Steven Bassett
--
Linda Corrigan
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