The Harrow Farm near Six Hills, Leicestershire (a fairly typical
post-Enclosure farmstead) seems to be a C19th 'revival' of the
medieval field name 'Arrow Field' (in Wymeswold parish) which was
situated to the immediate north of Harrow Farm. The upper reaches of
the River Mantle (which has it source in or near the Arrow Field)
were known until the C19th as the River Arrow.
Early OS maps show no minor toponyms to indicate that Harrow Farm
took its name from anything other than the Arrow Field.
There is every possibility that the people who named Harrow Farm
(situated in Burton on the Wolds parish very near the boundary with
Wymeswold) might have known (or at the very least known of) the
people who named Hrempi's Farm at Rempstone (mentioned in a recent
post to this list) which is about 5 miles away (or vice versa
depending on whether or not Harrow Farm was named before Hrempi's Farm).
Whether or not the name 'Arrow Field' itself derives from a 'hearg'
is open to conjecture. It is certainly the right place for a 'hearg
' and the Goscote Hundred moot site was at Six Hills
As the moot site for Framland Hundred (the adjacent hundred to
Goscote) was also at a probable hearg I am interested to know if
other hundred/wapentake moot sites were at known or probable hearg
sites. It is especially curious that the name '(H)Arrow Hundred
never appears to be used, so is such a construction tautological
(i.e. insufficiently 'distinctive')?
'Goscote' is itself an example of a revival as Goscote Hundred split
into East and West Goscote Hundreds in A-S- times. 'East Goscote'
was adopted as the name of a large 1970s housing estate on the
northern edge of Syston (although there was never previously any
settlement called 'Goscote'). Intriguingly, 'East Goscote' is an
example of a 'cardinal' toponym which makes no sense, as the name
does *not* denote it being east of anywhere else ;-)
So many digressions...
Bob
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