Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club. ANNUAL MEETING, NOVEMBER 19TH, 1896. -- THE Annual Meeting for the election of President and Officers for 1897 was held in the Woolhope Club Room on the 19th inst. The following were present :Mr. H. Cecil Moore (President), Rev. Preb. Wm. H. Lambert, Rev. H. B. D. Marshall, Rev. M. Marshall, Captain R. H. de Winton, Messrs. B. St. John Attwood-Mathews, J. Edy Ballard, J. Carless, Gilbert Davies, James Davies, F. R. Kempson, R. Lewis, H. Southall, H. G. Sugden, J. P. Sugden, and James B. Pilley (Assistant Secretary). Mr. Moore was re-elected President, and the Rev. J. Barker, Mr. F. R. Kempson, the Rev. H. T. Williamson, and Dr. J. H. Wood were elected VicePresidents. Rev. Preb. W. H. Lambert was elected on the Central Committee, vice Mr. O. Shellard, resigned, and Mr. James Davies was elected Auditor. There was no further change in the constitution of the Committee. The Volume of Transactions for 1893-1894 was laid on the table and distributed to each member present. It was resolved that Mr. James B. Pilley (the assistant secretary) call the attention of those members who had omitted to pay their subscriptions, due January 1st, 1896, to Rule xii.-"That any Member whose annual subscription is twelve months in arrear shall not be entitled to any of the rights and privileges of membership; and any Member whose annual subscription is two years in arrear may be removed from the Club by the Central Committee." Notice of an alteration and addition to Rule ix. was introduced by Mr. Thos. Hutchinson, to be brought forward as a proposition at the next general meeting of the Club. Rule ix. is as follows:-"That all candidates for membership shall be proposed and seconded by existing members, either verbally or in writing, at any meeting of the Club, and shall be eligible to be balloted for at the next meeting, provided there be five members present; one black ball in three to exclude." The alteration proposed is-for "next meeting" read "next annual general meeting." The proposed addition at the end of this Rule is as follows:"The number of ordinary members shall be limited to 200, and until the existing membership is reduced to that number no new member shall be elected. Provided nevertheless that at any time the President and Central Committee may propose any candidate whose scientific or other qualifications entitle him to become a member." The following were elected members:-Mr. Robert Evans, of Eyton Hall, Leominster; Dr. C. S. Morrison, of Burghill; and Mr. Ernest T. Woodward, of Goodrich. Mr. Bellerby was proposed and seconded, to be balloted for at the next meeting. A proposal by Mr. H. Southall, that an extra meeting of the Club should be held during the winter months, was referred to the Central Committee for their consideration, with recommendation for its adoption if possible. Mr. Edy Ballard exhibited several trays containing, out of his collection of about one thousand specimens, a selection of nearly 400 flint flakes, discovered by him during the last few years in the parish of Wellington Heath, near Ledbury. The selection contained various forms of scrapers and flakes, and several cores from which they had been struck; also several flints that had apparently been used for boring holes, and two fragments of flints with ground surfaces. The flints denote an antiquity of the neolithic age. A few remarks upon this subject will be found in Transactions of the Woolhope Club, 1894, page 191. Information has been sent by Mr. W. C. Ashdown, F.Z.S., of a magnificent specimen of the White-tailed Eagle, Haliaëtus albicilla, having been swept into Shropshire by the gale, and shot in the dusk by Mr. Gordon on November 7th, at Dinchope, near Craven Arms. Mr. Ashdown says it is an immature bird, and that its plumage is simply perfection. This bird does not attain its full plumage till the fifth or sixth year. Mr. Ashdown has left Hereford, to his own benefit it is hoped, but certainly to the regret of naturalists in Hereford, who have highly appreciated his knowledge of British birds, and his skill in setting them up in attitudes true to nature. His address now is-45, High Street, Shrewsbury Dr. Wm. Howells writes from Church House, Talgarth :-"It is generally understood that rapacious birds mate and breed early in the year, and that their breeding period is comparatively brief. This is more or less true of the Orders Accipitres and Striges, and also applies to the family Corvidæ. As a striking and unusual exception I saw, last Tuesday evening, November 10th, at 4.45 p.m., a young Tawny Owl (Syrnium aluco), perched on a ruined cottage within reach of my hand. Its only cry was the usual clicking note "kee-wick" its head was covered with grey down, and elsewhere over the body bunches of it were interspersed with maturer feathers." "On November 10th I saw a solitary Martin (Chelidon urbica) flying about among the rocks above Bracelet Bay, near Swansea." THE SURVIVAL OF ROMAN PLACE NAMES. BY F. HAVERFIELD, CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. THE survival of Romano-British place names is a matter of considerable interest to the antiquary as well as to the historian. They form a part of the small legacy which we English in England have inherited from the Kelts who preceded us. In Herefordshire there appears to be only two such cases of survival. Ariconium, usually and plausibly located at Bolitree and Westonunder-Penyard, near Ross, probably survives in Archenfield. Magnae (or whatever was the nominative of the form known to us only in the dative Magnis), may probably be traced in the name of a West Saxon tribe which occupied much of Herefordshire, the Magesaete. The oldest form of their name, as given in a document of A.D. 811, is Magonsaete, that is the dwellers at Magon. The word is compounded like Dorsaeta, the dwellers at Dur(novaria) and in the land of the Dur(otriges), now Dorset, and other Saxon place and tribe names. The evidence on the matter is set forth in the annexed letter written at my request by Mr. W. H. Stevenson, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, who is perhaps the first living authority on the subject of English place names. I desire particularly to call attention to the fact that there is old and definite evidence in favour of the derivation, because mere similarity of modern forms goes for little. Nothing has been a greater source of confusion in the study of Romano-British topography than the attempts made for it-and worst-by Camden, to identify apparently similar words without tracing their history. It is absolutely necessary in all cases to research, and I believe that no better work could be done by local archæologists than a detailed examination of the significance, the origin, and the various forms and proper use of their local place names. How long, for instance, has the name Watling-street been applied to the Roman road from Wroxeter through Leintwardine to Kenchester? Watling-street is of course an old name in itself is it an old name as used of this particular road? I cannot find out that any county historian has paid the least attention to the point. Yet as the road is in many places a boundary, it is almost sure to be mentioned in some charter or map or terrier or estate-survey. So far as is known at present there is nothing to determine whether the name is old or was invented for this road by some antiquary (say) in the seventeenth century. There was at that time a good deal of such inventions: to this day there are two Morecambes competing inventions for the site of the Bay Morecambe mentioned in " 'Ptolemy," one on the Solway, the other near Lancaster. Watling-street, in Herefordshire, may be a similar invention-we need evidence of its age to decide. The matter is an important The meaning of the name is notoriously obscure, and one of the first conditions for deciphering it is a knowledge of its proper use. Was it applied only to one or two roads, or to many? At once we come to the question, how old is the name in Herefordshire? one. : [The oldest reference which I know to the use of the name "Watlingstreet," in Herefordshire, is in Horsley's Britannia Romana, p. 388. The country people near Wroxeter give the name Watling-street to the way which goes through the middle of Shropshire into Herefordshire (as I apprehend) to Kenchester.' Horsley's book was published in 1732. I confess I should like older and more distinct testimony. As the road forms in some places a parish boundary, and often (I should imagine) an estate boundary, deeds, terriers, and charters should exist which would take us back far beyond 1732.] I now subjoin Mr. Stevenson's very valuable letter on the forms of the name of the Magesaete :- The earliest form of Magesætan is in an original charter of 811 (Cartul. Saxon., i. 462 line 1): 'on Magonsetum æt Geardcylle' (Yarkhill, co. Hereford). Setum is dat. pl. of Sete (W. Sax. sæte). This form is important, and I think supports the derivation from Magn(is). A like form occurs in a 14th cent. copy of a Glouc. charter (C.S. ii. 152), which I believe to be genuine : 'in Magansetum iiii. manentes [hides] in Briencandafelda.' The latter is a corruption or misreading of O.E. letters representing a form of Irchingfield, as the Gloucester chartulary says that the grant was in Erchenefeld. In 959 (CS. iii., 242, 20) it is pagus Magesætna (gen. pl. of Magesætan.) This charter shows that Stauntonon-Arrow and Hay, county Hereford, were in the district of the Magesætan. Chronicle 1016. Magesætan (dat. pl., the people, not the district), 1041. Roni Magesetensium (comes); Florence of Worcester, ed. Thorpe, i., 265. This chronicler (i., 289), says :-Et quia civitas Wigornia, tempore quo regnabant Brytones vel Romani in Brytannia, et tunc et nunc totius Hwicciae vel Magesetaniae metropolis extit famosa, &c. Here vel must be copulative, since Hwiccia and Magesaetan were not identical. Flor. (i. 238) has a list entitled 'Nomina praesulum Magesetensium sive Herefordenium.' " This letter has only elicited the following reply from an honorary member, Mr. Wm. Phillips, of Shrewsbury: : WATLING STREET IN SHROPSHIRE. The suggestion of Mr. Haverfield that the application of the name Watling-street to certain Herefordshire roads may be an invention of the 17th century imposes upon the antiquaries of that county the necessity for investigating the authority for its use. I ventured to remark under the above date that the frequent occurrence of the name on the Ordnance Map of Shropshire imposed a like duty on the antiquaries of this county. Without presuming to undertake the task, I may point out that so far as the employment of the name for designating the road running east from Uriconium, still the high road to London, it can claim at least 700 years usage. Wombridge Priory, which stood near Oakengates, founded by William de Hadley with Seburga his wife and Alen their son, about 1136, was situated in Hadley Wood, which wood is described in the Chartulary of that Priory as "Bounded on one side by a rivulet, which divided the said wood from the King's adjacent Forest; on another side, by a rivulet, called Sprung 66 wella-broc; on a third side, by 'Watlingstreet'" (Eyton, vii., 353). In a later grant (1259) to the same Priory, by Hamo le Strange, Watelyngstret" occurs as a boundary of property. In a Charter of Edward I. (c. 1300) is defined the boundary of the Royal Forest of Wellington and Morfe, which also mentions "Watlingestrete." By a reference to the Chartulary of Wombridge Priory, of which abstracts have appeared in the Transactions of the Shropshire Archæological Society, there will be seen many instances of the use of the name in reference to the same road, which cover a distance of 10 miles or more. Vol. ix., 307, 309, 332, 351, 354; vol. xi., 325, 326, 329, 335. Whether the name is applied to other undoubted Roman roads in Shropshire I am not at present able to state. That which, leaving Uriconium on the south, crosses the river by a bridge over the Severn, and branches in three directions, one of which traverses the Stretton Dale to Bravinium, has many features confirming its Roman use, if not original construction; but I have seen no ancient authority for their being called Watling-street. The last-named branch is called in ancient deeds Bot-street. W. P. ABUNDANCE OF LARVÆ OF ACHERONTIA ATROPOS, All the periodicals devoted to subjects of Natural History record a more than usual abundance this season of the larva of Acherontia atropos (the Death's head moth) in numerous parts of the Kingdom. In Herefordshire several have been seen. |