> Actual Celtic settlement names, coined as such and not
> transferred from some previous landmark, are the rarest of
> the lot. 

On this theme, what about Pennyunk Lane in Ashford-on-the-Water, Derbyshire?  The earliest map (Senior; mid-1600s) has no lane where Pennyunk Lane now is.  There are 2 ‘field names’ labeled Pennyunck / Pennyhunck by Senior on his survey (so I’m assuming the lane and the name of the lane came about later, during the enclosure era probably).  However, mysteriously, Pennyunk Lane is not actually adjacent or even THAT near to the Pennyunck / Pennyhunck units of land (there are intervening fields with unrelated names on Senior’s survey)!  The Pennyunk-type place-names clearly long pre-date the lane though, as a unit of land is independently referred to as Penyunke and Penyonke in 1423 and Pennyunck in 1617 too.  The area of cultivated land labeled Pennyunck / Pennyhunck in the mid-1600s still has the same shape today and is sited on a limestone spur, a headland with steep sides / cliffs overlooking the Wye Valley (and the RB field systems associated
 with the entrance to Deepdale opposite), and close to an ancient route-way (Ashford is on a prehistoric N/S route-way, later an Anglo-Saxon era Portway, at a key crossing of the River Wye up to the modern era - with an adjacent Iron Age enclosure at Fin Cop and several Romano-British settlement sites close-by).  [I’ll attach a map in a follow-up email as I’m not sure attachments can be posted to this site.]  

Since the Penyunke / Penyonke / Pennyunck / Pennyhunck headland is so close to the ancient (and modern) village centre, and _Aisseford_ / Ashford is a wholly Old English reference to the river-crossing, then I wondered if _pennyunk_ might perhaps have once been the pre-English place-name for a settlement here (i.e. penn = headland -> 'village at the spur' etc; transferred to a parcel of land, later a farm track too, that led to it’s survival-in-disguise)?  Given the situation of the village on an ancient route-way and river-crossing, the archaeology surrounding it on all sides, and its later importance as an Anglo-Saxon royal estate (“Bakewell, Ashford and Hope in the Peak District were the centres of large territories before the middle of the tenth century: no later than 911 Uhtred bought 60 manentes of land from the Vikings at Ashford and Hope”), it seems exceedingly likely that there must have been some sort of settlement here in the
 Romano-British and early Anglo-Saxon eras (and the Peak Park archaeologists would concur).

If anyone has any ideas about this mystery, it would be great to hear back!

Cheers

Paul