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The names given to places by the Saxon colonizers tell us a great deal about the way our own areas appeared after the Roman occupation. One of the most common place name endings is "ley" (from Old English "leah'). The plan below (not to scale) shows many of the places in South-West Warwickshire which ended in 'ley'.
The meaning of 'ley' varies a little according to the topography - often it denotes a space in woodland used for pasture or sometimes arable cultivation: occasionally it means simply 'wooded land'. It always points to an are well wooded. To the Saxon newcomers a clearing in a wood would have been invaluable in building a small settlement. The British (the Celts) no doubt had already started to colonize some of these woodland sites before the Saxons came (Walcot in our own area is a case in point - the cottages of the Welsh or strangers).
South-west Warwickshire, therefore, from the place-name evidence, was a well-wooded area before the Norman Conquest, on the edge, to the north-east, of the Forest of Arden and on the edge to the west, of Feckenham Forest. The Arrow and Alne valleys would have appealed to the Saxon settlers, with an unlimited supply of wood for building and fuel and a constant supply of water, with the added attraction of a ready means of communication. Today, we all find it a pleasure to live in this area: the Saxons showed us the way 1,500 years ago. The places shown by the numbers below are detailed here
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Additional General Information
The Language of the Anglo-Saxons and
Vikings
| Discovering Place-names | John Field | Shire Publications |