SATICHE - 0332

Strange and Daft Place Names

Ufton Nervet - which is a hamlet south of Reading. Or how about Ugley near the Essex-Suffolk border (which genuinely has the Ugley Women's Institute based there, or Crazies Hill between Twyford and Henley.
Speaking of that area, has anyone been to Bug's Bottom recently?.....
Back to hills for a moment: Shootup Hill, just north of Kilburn in London
Fetcham and Bookham (on the road from Redhill to Guildford) Pity there's no Nickham.....
Following up Fetcham and Bookham, there's a Downham and Turnham Green in West London.
Get out your road atlas and look at the Piddles and Puddles leading to Poole. (Or away from Poole depending which side you start :)
There's also Poxwell and Peover (lower and upper).
And Slack Bottom somewhere near Hebden Bridge.....
Driving out of Bromley towards the M25 and you go through Pratts Botttom.
And just south of Woodhatch, Reigate, bear right off the A217 and you go through Iron's Bottom.
In seemingly the middle of nowhere just outside Luton there is a small lane off the main road with a town style street name saying Carters Lane - also known as Wibbley Wobbley Lane.
In the Lake District, on the very northern fringe, there are three hills at the back of the Skiddaw range: Cockup, Great Cockup and Little Cockup.
You get pretty silly results if you translate into English some of the Scots' Gaelic names of mountains and places in the Highlands. Examples: A'Bhuidheanach bheag:The Little Yellow Place Braigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain:Hill of the corrie of the little round blisters. Beinn Udlamain:Mountain of the unsteady place. Beinn Ime:The Butter Mountain (is there a Wine Lake as well?)
There is a village in Kent between Bromley and Sevenoaks called Pratt's Bottom.; and another one, just outside Sevenoaks, called Bat and Ball. (named after a pub).
There is a village about half an hour's train ride north of Tromsoe, Norway, on the way to Bodo, called Hell.. There is a village in the Austrian Alps, I think in Carinthia or down that way, called Fucking. (rhymes with "looking").
Which of course leads us onto that standby of sniggering over atlases in geography lessons: Wankie in Rhodesia. Unfortunately since the country became Zimbabwe they've changed it back to the original Hwange.
...which reminds me of two neighbouring towns not far from Munich called Grub and Poing.
There's a village by the name of Nasty, to the SE of Leighton Buzzard. I've only been past it (never to it) but the idea of the Nasty Village Pub, Nasty Inn, Nasty Bakery etc somehow appeal to me....
...and thinking about it, there's always the Witterings (both East and West!)
...or even Splott, Cardiff.
Don't forget Westward Ho! in Devon.
Which puts me in mind of a mountain in Bavaria (near Garmisch-Partenkirchen to be precise) called the Wank. You can even take the Wankbahn to the top...
Cripes, of course, I forgot that one! I've even been up it. When you go on the Wankbahn you get a ticket - or you did in 1985 - which said Wank - Spass across the top in big letters. Spass means fun.
According to Mike Harding's book Walking the Dales, there are two places (probably geographical features rather than actual villages) somewhere near Todmorden which are (or used to be) listed on the Ordnance Survey map as Pissen Clough and Shitten Clough - the locals decided to take the piss out of the early OS surveyors when asked "What's that place called?"
Two from the North East not far from Durham, are Pity Me and No Place.
Dresden in Stoke and Moscow in Ayrshire
Isn't there Pratts Bottom near south London/Bromley area?
Yes there is - it's just up the road from Badgers Mount. Just outside Birmingham is the classic roadsign Frankly 2 /Rubbery.
There is a place near Huddersfield called Upper Cumberworth, one of these nights I am going to fill in the obviously missing letters *CU* on the sign.
Somewhere near Oxford - Kingston Bagpuize.....
I've just remembered two places in Northumberland: Haltwhistle and Slaggyford.
I thought I ought to contribute one or two of my own too. There's Piddletrenthide (one of the piddles already mentioned, I think) and you just can't leave out Nether Wallop.....
I'm sure I heard something on the radio this morning about there being tailbacks on [some road] near Toaster (spelled Towcester)
Not forgetting dear old Lincolnshire where there is Mavis Enderby. Speaking of Mavis (don't we always) in the Shetland Islands there is the delightful Mavid Grind.
Somewhere around the Meon Valley area of Hampshire lies a small village called Soberton. We were anything but, after we'd investigated three pubs there and stayed in them for far too long.
Bloody hell, I could walk to there from here. Are there really three pubs? I had Soberton down as 1 pub and a general store a war memorial and eight houses.
I've always thought that Chipping Sodbury was a silly one. Have you ever met anyone who'll admit coming from there ?
Or parts of the anatomy....you can go to Eye if you like in Cheshire.
....or Luddenden Foot if you like in Yorkshire.
Just past (about 15 miles) Hints in Staffs, there's a place called Weeford.
Also, further south on the A5 on the way to London is a charming hamlet known as Willey
....my absolute fave is a place which was almost on the front of my old road atlas. It's a really tiny place, south of Birmingham called Bell End.
Of course there is the aptly named Limpley Stoke (both Upper and Lower) just down the Hill from Bath University....
And of course, there's Wyre Piddle in Worcestershire, just down the road from the DRA, in fact!
There's a river down south somewhere (Dorset) called the river piddle. Around it are placed called "Puddletown" and "Piddlehampton" Don't know why they get puddle from piddle.
Have a look at some of our machine names, they are named after places in Northumbria and I take great pleasure in finding odd names for certain individuals. We have Dirtpot, Crackpot, Bushygap and Booze for starters. Two that I have had to pass up because they are too long are Sheepwash and Boghouses.
Quite. But I've always thought the name Nempnett Thrubwell has a resonant ring. It's small village between Blagdon Lake and Chew Valley Lake. Just turn off the A368 at the village of Ubley to get there. And then carry on to the village of Butcombe where you can worship at the world-famous brewery.
What about Hogshead (pronounced Hog-shed), the undergraduate server at the Physical Chemistry Lab in Oxford?
At least it's not Peasedown St John. ;-)
There is a place in the Medway valley in Kent called Snodland.
Bunny, outside Loughborough
Not to mention Bell End in Worcestershire, so I won't.
What about Great Bulging, near Littlehampton
The one I like in North Humberside (or whatever that bit of Yorkshire is now called) is Land of Green Ginger.
Then there is Wales (spelled Wells) which is actually in Somerset.....
and there's another Wales between Sheffield and Anston (W Riding)
..and Egypt which is in Buckinghamshire, near Andover....
...and New Zealand in Wiltshire...
... and we have a Canada, in the New Forest...
Not forgetting Land of Nod somewhere sw of Driffield.
I've always been fond of Cold Christmas, in Herts.
How about the Piddles in Hereford and Worcester - Upper, Lower and Wyre.
And Eggborough in Yorkshire....
Ham and Pill, both in Avon.
Or Christmas Pie in Surrey, just along the road from Normandy.
..calling from Newmarket in Suffolk, the centre of the universe.. Whose Universe? Those people in tweed jackets and flat caps who worship those expensive lumps of meat with a leg at each corner?....
Or what about Bury St Edmunds?
I now live in Perth, WA in a rediculously named suberb of Innaloo. I think it's probably Aboriginal for dunny.
There's Kentish Town which isn't in Kent, Lonesome which isn't particularly, Old Ford which sadly isn't near Vauxhall, the Vale of Health (in London, yes!), World's End in Enfield, Tooting Graveney, Strawberry Hill and Ham on opposite banks of the Thames, and Friern Barnet which is just silly.
As are Monken Hadley and Furzedown. Strand On The Green, Shirley, Lessness Heath, Hampstead Garden Suburb (did they try to build another Garden City but run out of money?), Holders Hill, Friday Hill, Child's Hill, Shooters Hill, Hanger Hill, Bush Hill Park, Ponders End, North End, Gospel Oak, Seething Wells and for the technologists, North Cray.
In a particularly passionate love-making session with your girlfriend, you might Pinner, put your hand Upper Holloway and Battersea. (you have to think about the last one for a second)
Then there's what God did when he created Yorkshire: Maida Hill then Maida Vale.
...and we also have Burnham on Sea....
Knob End, just north of Manchester
Twatt in the Orkney's
...and Twatt in the Shetlands (You think 1 twatt would be enough, there's no pleasing some people)
Pusey, Oxon (Don't believe the locals when they pronounce it Pewsey we
As you drive through, um, Staffordshire I think it is, you see what you might think are a new series of helpful signs: HINTS:Please drive carefully ...took me years to work it out
An unfortunate juxtaposition in the index of the A-Z: Cockfosters, Coldblow
Anyone heard of Corleyville, just beyond Sanity (near Toronto)
Here in Pennsylvania, you can take Bird-In-Hand, go through Intercourse and get to Paradise.
That wouldn't be the Pennsylvania on the junction of the A420 and A46 near Bath then?
I doubt it, but there is a village in Lincolnshire called America!
...and we have 2 New Yorks in the UK, one in Lincolnshire and another in 'T & W', (which is what Whitehall now calls the area that used to be Northumberland, I think)
Is that anywhere near the village of California? There's a village (and I hesitate to use the word) called California near where my parents live in Westfield, West Lothian, Scotland.
We've got a California? in Italy too, near Castagneto Carducci. There's also Battipaglia which means "Beat the straw"!
Going back to Pennsylvania, there is a Scotland and a Britain there which I have passed by on the interstate numerous times though never visited.
...just over the US border, in Idaho(?) was a town called Good Grief......
I think there's a Philadelphia in Sheffield.
And a hamlet called Pennsylvania just north of Bath.
and there's a Boston, in Lincolnshire....
We have some Londons in various states, e.g., Kentucky. Then again, we also have an Athens and a Rome - both in Georgia!
....speaking of Kentucky, near Lake Cumberland there is a place called Conley Bottom.
And from Newfoundland: Heart's Content, Heart's Desire, Heart's Delight, Dildo, South Dildo, Tickle Harbour, Come By Chance, Goobies, Little Heart's Ease, Seldom, St. Jones Within, Sop's Arm, Sheshatsheits and Toogood Arm.
...speaking of which, In Newfoundland, Dildo is across from Conception Harbour and the town of the same name.
There are many in Newfoundland, such as Topsail Tickle, Joe Batt's Arm, and of course, Dildo, which recently decided not to rename itself Pleasant Valley or something similarly boring...
...but that didn't stop them renaming Backside Pond there....
And here in Texas we have Myass.....
I live in Tucson, Arizona, and we have a road off thataway called Superchicken Highway.......
There is a Truth or Consequences in New Mexico, named after the TV show (TV show offered big $$$ to any town with the balls to name themselves that)
These are all from Queensland which if you think about it is a pretty funny name as well. Apart from nicking names like Ipswich, Texas, Stonehenge and Brixton, all-originals are Woodenbong, Black Butt (right near the Black Butt Ranges), Gin Gin, Rollingstone and Mistake Creek.
A couple from this part of the world, Sz Tsz Shan and Tseng Tau Tsuen Sheung Tsuen. Try saying those to a taxi driver who doesn't speak English and you're pissed.
What about Blubberhouse in North Yorkshire?
Or better still, YonHee Dong in South Korea!
Near Bristol are Catbrain and Fishponds
Tyneside has a Cowpen, pronounced "Coop-en"
Cambois - pronounced "Cammiss"