I have been asked if I can explain the name Pilch which has been applied to various parts of the landscape in the northern part of the parish of Adstock in Buckinghamshire. There are presently a Pilch Farm, Pilch Lane and a Pilch Field nature reserve. The farm and field, and possibly even the lane, are post-enclosure features of the landscape (the parish was enclosed in 1798), but the name is older than that - the VCH Buckinghamshire says the enclosure map mentions a pre-existing Pilch Common, and Browne Willis’ History and Antiquities of the Town, Hundred and Deaconry of Buckingham, p. 126, quotes a 1703 glebe terrier which describes one of the parish’s three open fields as ‘Middle or Pilch Field’.
Pilch is a surname, but it seems unlikely that any landscape feature so large as a pre-enclosure open field would be named after an individual (and anyway a quick skim through some nominal lists has not revealed a single occurrence of the surname anywhere in Buckinghamshire, let alone Adstock itself).
As a word 'pilch' has had various meanings, most of them now obsolete: to pilfer; skin or hide; an outer garment of leather, often with the fur still on, or of some rough material; a triangular wrapper of flannel, wool, etc., worn over a baby's nappy; and a rough covering for a saddle, or a light frameless saddle. None of these seems likely to have been used to describe a part of the landscape.
Any ideas?
Matt Tompkins
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